Blessings: Shattered Sky
by Davner
Summary: The end is near.
1. Chapter 1

_Nature, nurture, Heaven and home..._

_Sum of all, and by them driven..._

The larger, male figure raised his sword quickly and just barely caught the edge of the battle-axe she had appropriated on the flat of the blade. Energy crackled between the two weapons as they made contact. The man (god? demon?) grit his teeth as he pushed back against her, but she would not cease.

_To conquer every mountain shown..._

_But I've never crossed the river..._

She saw the muscles of her arms strain beneath the strips of white cloth that encased her entire body, head to toe, and pushed harder. For whatever reason, they had opened her seal, suspended her torment, and she would seize this opportunity. To escape. To be free.

To kill them.

_Braved the forests, braved the stone..._

_Braved the icy winds and fire..._

The other warrior's sword cracked, and she saw his eyes go wide in the millisecond before the energy-reinforced bladed splintered beneath the axe she had taken from his companion. The axe head plunged forward. The warrior had good reflexes, for he managed to twist his torso at the last second and instead of chopping him in half, it only cut him down the right side of his chest. He cried out and fell backward.

_Braved and beat them on my own..._

_Yet I'm helpless by the river._

Before she could follow up with a finishing blow, the pain and fatigue from her torture struck her, and she doubled over, her breath rasping through the mummy-like strips of wet cloth that wrapped across her face. She fell to one knee, trying to catch her breath as the warrior scooted away, kicking his feet against the ground for purchase. As he approached the cavernous hallway's far exit, he stopped, his back coming into contact with the legs of another figure.

_Angel, angel, what have I done?_

_I've faced the quakes, the wind, the fire..._

She looked up and found this new figure circling the other warrior, her eyes locked onto her just as she kept her gaze on this new threat. The midnight-haired woman seemed familiar to her, but could not place how she knew her. It didn't matter. She had seen others she knew, people she had known as friends, stand across from her as enemies, as torturers.

_I've conquered country, crown and throne..._

_Why can't I cross this river?_

As if to bring that point home, the dark-haired woman extended her right hand straight out to her side. A long-shafted war hammer coalesced in the air, and her fingers wrapped around it. The stranger swung the hammer up and adopted a high-guard stance, her furious blue eyes never leaving her.

She looked down and banished the pain in her head and limbs. She nodded to herself and climbed to her feet, raising the axe into a similar guard.

_Angel, angel what have I done?_

_I've faced the quakes, the wind, the fire..._

_I've conquered country, crown and throne..._

_Why can't I cross this river?_

She darted forward, thrusting the axe head toward her new target's face. Her opponent spun away, the head of the war hammer swinging out, but she managed to snap her head back as it whistled past her, the air from its passage blowing against her face. She spun herself and took a swing at the woman, but the woman leapt back, surprisingly nimble for a woman with such a large, unwieldy weapon.

_Pay no mind to the battles you've won..._

_It'll take a lot more than rage and muscle..._

_Open your heart and hands, my son..._

_Or you'll never make it o'er the river._

She pressed her attack, leaping after the woman and doing her best to ignore the pain that racked her body and soul. Bringing the axe down on the spot the woman was standing and expecting a block. Instead, her opponent spun away again, the head of her hammer slamming into a concrete pillar nearby. It was no accident, for the stone rubble from the strike flew right toward her face.

_It'll take a lot more than words and guns..._

_A whole lot more than riches and muscle..._

She spun the axe and brought the blade up in front of her face, blocking the stone missiles which bounced off the steel with sharp clangs... but also blocked her sight for a crucial moment. When she lowered the axe a hair, she saw her opponent leaping toward her, her hammer raised for a killing blow.

_The hands of the many must join as one..._

_And together we'll cross the river._

In the half-second she had to respond, she leapt forward and rolled as the hammer crashed into the ground behind her where she had stood a moment before. She spun as her enemy did, and the two weapons met, crackling together as the spiritual reality that made them real warped around one another.

_Nature, nurture, Heaven and home..._

_It'll take a lot more than words and guns..._

_Sum of all and by them driven..._

_A whole lot more than riches and muscle..._

As before, she pushed, and the dark-haired woman pushed back.

_To conquer every mountain shown..._

_The hands of the many must join as one..._

_And together we'll cross the river._

She refused to yield, even as the torments she had endured and the pain associated with them threatened to overtake her again. She would not yield. She would leave this place or she would die.

She would die rather than go back to that.

_Braved the forests, braved the stone..._

_It'll take a lot more than words and guns..._

_Braved the icy winds and fire..._

_A whole lot more than riches and muscle..._

_Braved and beat them on my own..._

_The hands of the many must join as one..._

_And together we'll cross the river._

She began to gasp in effort, her eyes widening a hair as she saw the first crack form in the haft of her axe. With only a split second to act, she decided to spin back to her right again, but it was too late. The moment she began to shift her weight, the haft splintered and broke in two. Her foot slipped and rather than spin around for a counter swing, she fell onto her side. Her eyes whipped up to find her opponent raise her hammer for a final blow.

_And together we'll cross the river..._

Her eyes caught movement behind the raven-haired woman, and a familiar voice cried out.

"Skuld! Stop!"

Her opponent froze, but she was too well-disciplined to look away from her. She looked past her at a goddess she knew and knew well.

Belldandy, her eyes wide, reached toward her sister. "It's Lind, Skuld!"

She looked up at her enemy in surprise just as the dark-haired woman looked back in equal in shock.

_And together we'll cross the river..._

**Blessings: Shattered Sky**

**Chapter 1**

**And Together We'll Cross the River**

_Two weeks earlier..._

Keiichi Morisato grabbed his keys off a hook in the kitchen and rushed toward the front door. He hadn't been able to find his books, but at this point he had no choice but to leave without them. He could have sworn he had left them in the kitchen, but they weren't there or in the living room or his bedroom or anywhere else in the temple, it seemed. He hoped he could get through his German class without it. It was better to show up without the book than show up late, that was for sure.

He hoped his helmet was in the sidecar. He couldn't find that either. What the Hell was wrong with him today? He'd probably lose his head if it wasn't attached.

Throwing open the front door, he stopped short at the sight of the elderly woman who blocked his path. He wasn't sure, however, that "elderly" was the right word. Her hair was gray, but it was still full and vibrant, though pinned up in an elaborate style. She wore glasses, but seemed to look past them rather than through them. And although she had wrinkles, they were so few and far between it was if they were only there because a woman her age _had_ to have wrinkles so they gave her the minimum.

Even so, she seemed familiar, something around the eyes.

"Keiichi san," the woman began in a soothing but stern voice. "Where are you going?"

"Belldandy?" Keiichi sputtered incredulously. "Why do you look like that?"

The goddess smiled, but didn't answer. Closing her eyes, her body glowed a soft blue for a moment, and before he knew it, the young woman he knew was standing before him again.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Is that better?"

Keiichi paused for a moment, his brain trying to work things out for itself. "Yeah," he said. "Just... Nevermind," he finished. "I'm going to be late for school, and I can't find my books..."

"But Keiichi san," Belldandy said gently. "You don't have school today."

The statement brought Keiichi up short. "I don't?"

"No," she replied with a shake of her head. "It's Saturday."

"It is?" he asked, confused. "Are you sure?"

Belldandy smiled and reached out, taking his hand in hers, careful not to squeeze too hard lest the arthritis in his fingers bring him pain."Of course. Why don't you go back inside, and I'll fix you some lunch?"

He reached up to run his fingers through his hair, a nervous gesture she hadn't seen him do since his hair had become thin. Finding no hair at the top of his head, he blinked in puzzlement for a moment before taking a sharp breath.

Keiichi swallowed back embarrassment. "I'm sorry," he said, the echo of who he was sixty years ago gone now and replaced with the confidence of that man he had become since. "I did it again, didn't I?"

Belldandy smiled and caressed his face. "It's all right, Keiichi san. That's why I'm here."

He bit his lip and, desperate to change the subject, took another look at her. "It's been a long time since I saw you like this," he said. "I kinda missed it."

"Would you like me to stay in this form?" she asked. "I can do that." Altering her appearance as Keiichi aged to keep others not in the know from discovering her true nature had been something she was happy to do, even if "growing old with him" had been nothing more than an illusion. But she could drop the charade if he wanted her to. They didn't get many visitors, didn't go out much anymore... and it wasn't as if it would be for much longer anyway.

He nodded. "Yeah," he said. "It reminds me of when we met."

She leaned forward and gave him a soft kiss.

"I'll never forget that," he promised her. "I won't. I won't let myself."

She smiled and squeezed his hand but said nothing. He had, in fact, forgotten who she was on three occasions, but she wouldn't remind him. It would only hurt him, and there was no point in reminding him now anyway. A few days, a week at the most, and the last seven years would all seem like an odd dream as they discussed it over tea at her family's home in Heaven. Until then, she had resolved to make him happy and comfortable while the clock approached midnight in its own time.

"How about some soup?" she offered.

"Soup sounds wonderful," he replied. He turned and started back inside, and Belldandy stood on the porch, watching him walk away.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It was hard seeing him like this. She knew it was harder for mortals who had to watch the same thing with their loved ones without the promise of it being better in the next world.

As the goddess was about to take her first step into the house, the sound of a familiar voice stopped her.

"Oneesama!"

Her head whipped around, and the first genuinely happy smile she'd had in a year blossomed across her face. "Skuld!"

Keiichi wasn't the only member of her family to change with time. Her little sister now stood an inch taller than her, though her hair was shorter, falling to just behind her shoulders. Although she was dressed in an Earth-friendly blouse and pair of khaki slacks, she still stood as if she was wearing a uniform, carrying herself not as the rambunctious girl Belldandy had watched grow up, but a renowned military leader.

None of which Belldandy cared about as she bounded down the porch steps and embraced her sister.

"Welcome home!" Belldandy cried.

"It's good to be back," Skuld told her. "Sorry I haven't been able to come down more often..."

"You have a very important job," Belldandy told her, waving her sister's regret away. "And it is unfortunate that 'business' has been so good lately."

"Yeah, and time dilation's a bitch," Skuld agreed. "It's been five years for me, for you..."

"Fifteen," Belldandy informed her.

"Sorry," Skuld said again with a wince. "You can blame Hild if you want."

"Which one?" Belldandy asked as she led her sister up the stairs.

"The HIld who won," Skuld told her. "The one who lost doesn't much care anymore. Where's Keiichi?"

"Inside," Belldandy told her. "He's..."

"I know," Skuld said quickly. "I got your last letter." Her face fell. "I'm sorry."

Belldandy smiled. "Don't be," she said. "When... it's done..." she began carefully but regaining steam as she went, "... he will ascend to Heaven, and we'll have the rest of eternity to spend together."

The Valkyrie smiled comfortingly. "Well, things have finally quieted down enough for me to take some leave, so I'm here to help until... you know."

Belldandy smiled and hugged her sister. "Thank you."

Skuld gave her sister a once-over. "But just so you know, I'm not changing my form to look like I did back then. I like having breasts, thank you very much."

The goddess giggled and continued into the house. Having Skuld home made the temple seem like the home to a family again.

"So..." Skuld began, lowering her voice in case Keiichi was in earshot. "How is this going to work?"

"Simply," Belldandy told her. "Once it happens, I'll leave through the mirror and meet him in Heaven."

"That's it?" Skuld asked. "No moving sale, no divvying up the furniture?"

"There's little point in staying," Belldandy said as she entered the kitchen and recovered a soup pot from the cabinet.

Skuld stopped short. To anyone else who might hear that statement, there would have been no indication of anything wrong, but Skuld knew. She could hear it. The one note of bitterness in her sister's voice that made itself known for only a fraction of a second.

She had never broached this topic with Belldandy. As busy as she had been, she didn't feel right swooping in and stirring things up, hurting her sister and then having to rush off again to make sure Hild's civil war didn't spill over into Heaven. She was also ashamed, ashamed of not having been there for her during what she was sure must have been a sad time.

"It's not fair," Skuld said simply, the three words that had echoed in her head every time her thoughts had drifted to her sister and brother-in-law. "After everything the two of you went through, it's not fair."

Belldandy stiffened for a moment, but then continued cooking. "The Almighty One does what he does for a reason," she said quietly, and Skuld knew she didn't believe it. That was almost the saddest thing about the whole conversation.

"I'm sorry," Skuld said with a shake of her head. "But it's almost like it's spite. I don't know what reason he could possibly have, but it would have to be a pretty good one to do that to you. Almighty best and greatest, you're a fertility goddess! It's practically impossible to _not_..."

"Skuld, I don't wish to talk about this," Belldandy broke in suddenly. "It's in the past, and I've made what peace with it I can." She turned to her sister. "Can't we talk about you instead?" she asked with a forced smile. "All that research I did for my book, and it seems like I don't know anything about what's happened in your life."

The Valkyrie officer let out a breath and decided not to push further. She had come, after all, to make things _easier_ for Belldandy, not harder.

"Well, you know, the usual stuff," Skuld said. "Training and teaching, good times and bad times... and the occasional war. I still tinker with new technologies here and there, but mostly I keep busy."

"Do you have a boyfriend?" Belldandy asked with a smile.

The faintest glimmer of something painful passed over Skuld's face before a smile squashed it. "I don't have time for _friends_ let alone a _boy_friend," Skuld said with a wry grin. "Besides," she continued, "In my business, it... complicates things."

"You should make time," Belldandy told her. "Service to Heaven should not mean you have to give up happiness for yourself."

"If I really want a boyfriend, I'll build one," Skuld told her. She gave the idea some thought before quipping, "Probably won't give him intelligence, though. Just program him to buy me flowers and cook dinner for me. Past that, what do I need?"

Belldandy tried her best to give her sister a look of disapproval, but it collapsed under the assault of Skuld's grin.

888

She had spent the rest of the afternoon catching up with her sister and brother-in-law, sitting around the table and talking about old times. Keiichi was happy to see her, and remained lucid the rest of the day, for which she was grateful. She was certain it would break her heart to see him like that and wanted to forestall it as much as possible. It was amazing that there was a time in her life when she was willing to experiment on him, blow him up or generally make his life Hell on sheer principle.

Now she couldn't imagine a world without him. She tried to remember a time when he wasn't around and couldn't make it happen. She felt bad for Earth, losing a man like him, and good for Heaven for gaining him.

But Keiichi and Belldandy weren't the only relative she had come to see.

She hadn't stood before the large stone marker in five years, and a lot had changed since then. The last time she had set eyes on them, she was a child and Combat Division initiate. Now, she was a woman and the Division commander. If she could speak to them again, she would be speaking to them as their equals, but it was still hard to imagine such a thing.

Skuld knelt next to the marker and reached up to her collar, unpinning the rank insignia, the crossed lightning bolts and wings, affixed there. Gently, she placed them on the ground near the marker.

"These aren't mine," she whispered to him. "They're yours. They've always been yours." She smiled. "And as for you, you baka... look after him..."

She stood up just as a quiet pinging in her ear interrupted the moment. Reaching up, she squeezed the pearl stud in her ear.

"Skuld," she announced, silently bracing herself. Her first leave in years, and it only took a few hours before getting interrupted. With any luck this will be quick and...

"Ma'am, this is Lieutenant Tryss in the TOC," one of her Valkyries announced. "Ma'am, we have a situation here that you really should be involved in."

"Are we at war?" Skuld asked pointedly.

"No, Ma'am, it's just... weird."

"Look, Lieutenant, if..."

"Skuld, it's Shara." The announcement brought Skuld up short. She had known Shara since the first day of initiate training, and there was no Valkyrie she trusted more. "I know you're on leave, but believe me, you need to see this."

She paused. If Shara was telling her something was wrong, something was wrong.

"All right," she said. "I'll be up in a few minutes."

She heard the soft click that told her the relay had disconnected and sighed. She had no right to complain. A life of service is what she asked for, and a life of service is what she got.

As Skuld started toward the temple, she tried to find the right words to say to Belldandy. She needn't have bothered. She found the elder Norn standing at the top of the steps as if she had been waiting for her.

"You have to leave," Belldandy stated simply. At Skuld's questioning look, she smiled. "I saw you talking to yourself. Is everything all right?"

Skuld smiled reassuringly. "It's probably nothing," she said. "But you know how it is. A goddess's work is never done."

"No, I suppose not," Belldandy replied. "Will you come back?"

"As soon as I can," Skuld told her seriously. She reached forward and took her sister's hands in her own. "I swear, as soon as I can, I'll come back."

"Good," the other goddess told her. "I miss you."

"I miss you too." She took a breath. "Well, the sooner I go, the sooner I can get back."

"I ran Keiichi san a bath," Belldandy offered. "If you hurry, you might be able to get there before he does."

Skuld smiled and gave her a wave before entering the temple and heading toward the bathroom. She arrived at the door just as Keiichi did, a white bathrobe hanging from his bony shoulders.

"'Scuse me, old man," Skuld began. "I need to borrow your ride."

Keiichi paused. "Leaving already?"

"Yeah," Skuld told him. "Problem back home. I should be back soon, though."

He grinned. "Well, if you come back in the next half hour or so, I'd find another way in. Otherwise, you're going to get an eyeful of something you want no part of."

"And me without my eye-bleach," she mocked good-naturedly.

"Your sister never complained," Keiichi pointed out.

"I stopped trying to figure out my sister long ago," Skuld told him. "But don't worry, I won't pop into the middle of your private time with your rubber ducky."

He huffed out a chuckle, and Skuld smiled. "Take care, Keiichi," she said. "I'll be back soon."

"You better be," he said. "I'm not getting any younger here."

888

If it was an emergency, you wouldn't know by walking into the TOC. The assorted Valkyries on duty in the command center scurried to and fro in their usual business-like manor. The three-dimensional screen floating in the center of the room in the shape of a glowing cube, showed operations going on throughout Creation, just as it always had.

The only exception to the normalcy that Skuld could see were the three Valkyries standing together over a terminal at the far end. Skuld knew that terminal to be the interface with Yggdrasil, allowing the Combat Division access to the millions of strings of data Yggdrasil collected every moment. Skuld recognized her friend as one of the three and made her way toward them.

As commander of the 507th Winged Infantry Regiment, Col. Shara was required to pull duty as the TOC commander at various parts of the week, so it was no mystery why she was there. As she straightened to her full six-foot height, the blonde war goddess noticed Skuld and nodded to her in greeting.

"Commander," she began. "Sorry to pull you away from your family."

"It's okay, Shara," Skuld said. "I know you wouldn't pull me away for just anything." There was only the barest hint of friendly warning in her voice.

Shara decided to get right to the point. "Realm 703 is gone."

Skuld arched an eyebrow and eyed her friend warily, waiting for a trap to spring. "The Outback?" she asked. "What do you mean, 'gone?'"

"A couple of weeks ago, one of the Great Ships, the _Meriadoc_, passed through The Outback and picked up some strange readings," Shara explained. "The captain thought it might be a hazard to navigation, so when they returned to port, they filed the information with us. We were following up on it, and now..." She shrugged her shoulders. "Yggdrasil can't find it."

"Are you looking in the right place?" Skuld ask, leaning over the monitor to see for herself. "Did you try inputting the dimensional coordinates manually and..."

"Skuld, Yggdrasil can confirm the location of Realm 703," Shara told her. "What it can't confirm is the _existence_ of Realm 703."

Skuld digested this as she checked the readings herself. Yggdrasil was pointing its senses and eyes right in the spot of ether that Realm 703 was supposed to be in, and finding exactly nothing.

She studied the readings, her mind working overtime trying to sort it all out. Realm 703 was the youngest realm in Creation, only a few million years old. It had no intelligent life yet and was wild and overgrown. The Demons didn't care for it, and it was so out of the way that the Division hadn't even bothered to station anyone there.

"Shara, get the D2 up here," Skuld ordered quietly. "I want to know everything that's been happening in that part of Creation for the last month."

As her friend rushed off to find the Division's intelligence officer, Skuld straightened and issued another order. "And get Michael's office on the line. I need to speak to the Chief of Staff."

888

For all the mental preparation she had done, for all the assurance that it wouldn't be the end but a new beginning, the realization that the end had finally come blindsided Belldandy and struck her like a kick to the stomach.

It wasn't as if there was a grand announcement or anything. Everything seemed fine the day before when Skuld had left to return to Heaven. They had spent the evening together, eating the dinner Belldandy had made and talking about old friends long gone, some of whom Belldandy had to remind Keiichi were no longer with them.

They had set up their futon for bed, kissed each other good night and gone to sleep. The next morning, Keiichi couldn't get out of bed.

"Just not feeling well this morning," Keiichi had told her, and Belldandy believed it. But as the morning went on, she found that he was having a harder time breathing, a harder time staying awake. It had snuck up on her...

And she found she wasn't ready.

And so here it was, just past noon, that found Belldandy kneeling next to her husband and waiting for the inevitable with him. She held his hand, knowing there was nothing else to do. She had spent a lifetime with him, and while, yes, they would continue to be together in Heaven, the fact that this life was ending for them both hurt her heart. She had loved this life with him, and now it was ending with him.

"Bell," he croaked weakly.

Belldandy smiled weakly and caressed his face with the back of her fingers. "Hai, my love?"

"I'm not ready for this," he whispered.

"I know," she whispered back. "But it's all right. For a moment, you'll feel like you're in that space between falling asleep and dreaming. And then you'll arrive in Heaven just like stepping through a door, just like that. And I'll be there to meet you." She reached up with her other hand and wiped a tear from her eye.

"Promise me," he breathed. "I don't want to spend my first day there alone."

"You won't," Belldandy assured him. "I'll be waiting for you there. I'll pick you up at the arrival gate and take you straight to Moder's house." She smiled. "You know she's probably been planning a welcome party for you for the better part of three decades."

Keiichi 's lips curled up in a smile.

"Then we'll call Skuld and Peorth and have them come over and it'll be just like old times," she said. "You welcomed me to your world, and I'll welcome you to mine."

"Am I going to still be old?" he asked. Belldandy blinked at the question. "I'd kinda like my hair back... you know?"

Belldandy giggled, her hand going to her mouth in an effort to silence them. "Of course! You'll..." The sentence died on her lips. Just like that, he had gone.

Her mouth opened and closed twice before she was finally able to speak again, noting the moment with a quiet, "Oh." She cleared her throat as tears erupted into her eyes. Leaning down, she brushed her lips against his. "See you soon," she promised.

The goddess stood up and went to the phone, dialing the local hospital to report her husband's death. The nurse on the other end offered her sympathies and promised to send an ambulance out right away. Belldandy thanked her and made sure the front door was open.

She then went to the closet and pulled out a small bag, packing a few of the precious mementos they had collected over the course of their marriage: wedding photos, gifts, and reminders of Urd. With this done, she stopped in the bathroom door and paused, giving her home one final look before reaching out and turning off the lights.

Belldandy could make out the silhouette of her husband's body lying in the bedroom down the hall. She swallowed and turned, stepping into the bathroom and reaching out, touching the mirror.

The mirror glowed a soft blue as her travel medium opened. And without another look, Belldandy floated through it, leaving Earth forever.

888

"Ma'am! Commander!"

Skuld didn't look up from the intelligence reports she was studying from the commander's station in the TOC, but that doesn't mean she was ignoring the young officer trying to get her attention. "What is it, Tryss?"

"Ma'am," the young Valkyrie began, "The readings the _Meriadoc_ took... we found them again."

That statement brought Skuld's head right up. "Where?" she demanded.

"Realm 702," Tryss told her.

Skuld stood up, and every eye turned toward her. Eight hours had passed, and they had no clue what had happened to The Outback. Yggdrasil couldn't find it, and every attempt to physically send someone there had failed.

_It's like The Roundtable,_ Skuld had thought to herself. Could someone have blown up The Outback the same way they... she... had blown up The Roundtable?

"I want all eyes on 702," she ordered. "Where's that Double A we were going to send to The Outback?" she demanded. "Get him out the door! I want to know what's happening out there _now!_"

"Now this is damn weird," Shara remarked, staring at the readings Yggdrasil was feeding to them.

"What have you got?" Skuld asked, making her way to the terminal.

"No real definition on what it is," Shara began, "but take a look at the dimensional mass." She looked up at her commander in total bewilderment. "It's lower that what it was a week ago."

Skuld looked over the readings herself. It wasn't just dimensional mass. Physical mass was lower too. There was actually _less_ universe there than there was before.

"Where's that Double A?" she asked.

"He just arrived through Hardline 16 Delta," one of the other Valkyries informed her. "Nearest that we could get to the... the... whatever-it-is."

"Keep a close eye on him," Skuld ordered, looking up at the floating monitor. "And get us a visual feed."

The view on the monitor switched from several different places to one. Skuld looked at the visual feed coming from the Avenging Angel's tactical optics. Everything he was seeing, they were seeing.

Only Skuld couldn't really tell what they were seeing. The sky was grey, and she could make out a thick forest below as the Valkyrie flew over it. Dead ahead was a wall of grey-black clouds that roiled in an angry miasma that stretched from the ground to the top of the sky.

"TOC, Falcon Six-Two," they heard the Valkyrie call to them. "Are you getting this? It's unreal."

"It's grainy, Six-Two," Shara informed him. "What do you make of it?"

"It goes on forever," the Avenging Angel told her. "It's more like a wall than a storm. My instruments can't make out anything past the edge."

"What's the wind speed?" Shara asked.

"Manageable," he replied. "I'm going to move closer."

Skuld watched and laced her fingers in front of her chin as she watched. The storm grew larger in the screen in front of her. That Avenging Angel had balls of solid brass. She intended to tell him so as soon as he got back.

"I'm near the edge," she heard him shout to them, the wind in the background made it harder for them to make him out. The screen was completely grey at this point, and though Skuld tried, she couldn't peer past the outer wisp of cloud. "I'm still getting nothing past the edge of the storm."

Shara turned to her. "You want him to try move inside?" she asked quietly.

Skuld shook her head. She didn't like this one bit. "Have him stand off five miles and keep his distance."

"Falcon Six-Two, TOC," Shara began. "Pull back to five miles and hold position..."

As Shara gave him orders, Skuld watched the screen and jumped as the clouds in front of her suddenly roiled toward them, enveloping the Avenging Angel.

The screen went dark.

Standing next to her, Shara blinked in shock. "Falcon Six-Two?" she called. "Falcon Six-Two, respond."

There was complete silence in the TOC. Skuld turned to the Yggdrasil uplink terminal. "Have Yggdrasil locate him," she ordered. "And give us his status."

"Falcon Six-Two, do you read?" Shara continued to try.

Skuld took a deep breath and let it out as the Valkyrie at the Yggdrasil terminal called out to her. "Ma'am, he's gone."

"Dead," Skuld concluded.

"Ma'am," the Valkyrie continued. "I mean _gone._ Yggdrasil can't even pick up the sublimation of his essence."

"What are you saying?" Shara demanded.

"Ma'am, I'm saying that if I didn't know for certain already, I couldn't tell you that Falcon Six-Two ever existed at all!"

888

Belldandy emerged in Heaven in the hardline nexus closest to the Arrival and Orientation Center where mortals passed through The Almighty's realm on their way to their next lives. Despite what the numerous cultures on Earth had thought, "Heaven" was a concept much more simple and yet complicated than they thought. To wit, they were all right... and all wrong... at the same time.

While many souls found their way to much more pleasant realms, very few actually entered Heaven as Heaven actually was, the center of the universe. It was less eternal bliss than it was an administrative area.

Still, some mortals were permitted to live there, and those who had received Heaven's Grace were on that particular list. Belldandy had made preparations, making sure that the AOC knew he was to routed here, just in case.

She walked through the main portal of the AOC, the walls lined with gold and shimmered in the sunlight. Checking a diagram at the center of the lobby, she found where arrivals from Earth were routed and started walking, setting a brisk pace. She didn't want to risk arriving late to meet him.

After only a minimal amount of searching, she found the right gate and saw no activity save for a young goddess working at the information terminal nearby. She sighed in relief. She had made it. When Keiichi arrived in Heaven, she would be the first thing he saw.

On that note, she quickly pulled a compact from her pocket and checked her hair. She wasn't a particularly vain person, but she wanted his first view of Heaven to be perfect.

Closing the compact, she took a breath and waited.

It was ten minutes before she began to actually feel anxious and the possibility that she hadn't arrived in time began to gnaw at her. What if he arrived before she did and, with no one to meet him, was wandering throughout the terminal?

It was a slim chance, she knew, but she wouldn't tolerate it. She stepped over to the information kiosk, and the maroon-haired goddess there looked up, smiling at her.

"Good afternoon, Ma'am," she said. "Are you lost?"

"No," Belldandy replied. "I'm waiting for an arrival. Has anyone from Earth come through today?"

"No, Ma'am," the goddess twittered.

Belldandy sighed in relief. "Then I'm not too late."

The other goddess arched an eyebrow. "Ma'am... I noticed you've been standing there awhile. When do you expect your mortal friend to arrive?"

"He shed his mortal life about... say... twenty minutes ago," Belldandy told her. "So he should arrive any moment, right?"

The information goddess tapped the top of her desk. "That's a bit odd," she said. "It shouldn't take that long." She opened up a light screen and tapped in her password. "What is his name?"

"Keiichi Morisato," Belldandy told her, becoming a touch worried by the woman's demeanor.

The woman typed it in and paused. "Drat. Can you spell that for me?"

Belldandy spelled her husband's name and waited as the goddess typed it in.

"How do you spell it in his native script?" she asked.

The Norn blinked and spelled it in Japanese. She watched the other goddess's face as she typed it in and bit her lip.

"Ma'am, he's not here."

"What?" Belldandy cried. "But he received a wish! He was supposed to be forwarded here!" She couldn't believe it. "He must have gone straight to Elysium or one of the..."

"Ma'am... I don't mean he's not in Heaven," the goddess went on. "I mean he's not in the system."

Belldandy actually smiled. "Of course he is," she corrected gently. The other goddess was young, probably inexperienced. "I was an Yggdrasil systems operator. Would you mind if I took a quick look?"

The maroon-haired girl ceded the console to her, and Belldandy took the seat, accessing the AOC's system computer. She typed in the information, including Keiichi's unique entity identification code and waited while the computer searched.

FILE NOT FOUND

Belldandy frowned. She re-entered the information and repeated the search.

FILE NOT FOUND

Her fingers nimbly flew over the keyboard, bringing up a search menu that would check each of the paradise realms individually.

FILE NOT FOUND

She logged into the Yggdrasil server and typed in her password. For whatever reason, the AOC's computer couldn't find him, but Yggdrasil knew and saw all. Even if, by hook or crook, Keiichi had ended up in the Demon Realm, Yggdrasil would find him there. She wouldn't put such a thing past Hild, but Hild hadn't bothered with them in decades. It seemed odd she would pick up her old hobby now.

The goddess entered his information and ordered a search throughout every realm.

She waited as Yggdrasil conducted its search, and when completed, her heart plunged into her stomach. What she saw wasn't possible.

FILE NOT FOUND

_To be continued..._

Author's Notes:

"The Humbling River" belongs to Puscifer.


	2. Nature, Nurture, Heaven and Home

Disclaimer: AMG belongs to Kosuke Fujishima.

**Blessings: Shattered Sky**

**Chapter 2**

**Nature, Nurture, Heaven and Home**

* * *

_Dear Lenus,_

_It's definitely turning into one of those weeks. You think you're facing one crisis, one that affects you personally, and you think it can't be worse... and then the universe decides to one-up you. _

_I love you, and I miss you._

_Skuld_

* * *

"Science and Tech's best guess is that it spreads through the hardlines," the briefer explained, standing before Skuld and rest of the Combat Division's officers in the main briefing room. The screen behind the young god changed to show a dimensional map of the hardline network, which resembled a starfish with long, wavy arms. The map focused on the area where the Outback used to be and the Veldt still was... but not for long. "Realms 702 and 703 are in the fourth spiral arm, a line of realms connected one after another after another like pearls on a necklace."

"So for now whatever-it-is can only eat one realm at a time," Skuld concluded.

"Yes, Ma'am," the briefer told her.

"Well, that gives us some time," Shara piped up from Skuld's left. "So far it doesn't seem to be in a huge hurry."

"No, I imagine entire universes are large meals," Skuld replied deadpan. She took a deep breath and asked an uncomfortable question. "Does S and T have an estimate as to what will happen if this thing makes it _out_ of the fourth spiral arm?"

The briefer cleared his throat. "Dr. Seshat isn't... um... comfortable with discussing such a thing without more data," he told her.

"Dr. Seshat can revise her numbers later," Skuld told him in annoyed assurance. "What does S and T think?"

The young god with every eye in the room on him took a deep breath. "If... the anomaly reaches a hardline nexus with three or more connections..." He paused and swallowed, unused to and uncomfortable with delivering statements of such gravity. "... the entire hardline network will be infected twenty thousand hours after first contact."

The room filled with awe-struck murmurs. Skuld remained silent as she digested this proclamation.

"Then I guess we need a plan," she noted quietly.

"Without more information on what the anomaly is... its construction... there's no way to..." the briefer began.

"We can starve it," Shara suggested, cutting him off. "Gather up as much tri-plutonium resin as we can get our hands on and detonate it in Realm 701. Just like with the Roundtable. It'll cut it off from the rest of Creation."

"I can think of a good reason not to do that," Skuld told her pointedly. "The seven point three _billion_ sentients who live in Realm 701."

"There's actually a better reason," the briefer piped up. The Valkyrie leadership turned back to him. "It just won't work. You see... the Roundtable isn't actually gone. It's just been reduced to such small spatial particulates that it can't be accessed or perceived like other realms. Think of it like this: Right now, the anomaly is eating steak. It has to chew, swallow, digest... A realm like the Roundtable is going to be like baby food. It'll tear through it in a fraction of the time it's taking now."

Before Skuld could react to that statement, the doors to the briefing room opened, and a god in white and blue robes marched in. Skuld quickly hopped to her feet, prompting the other Valkyries to do the same. The god found her and made a beeline straight to her.

"Michael," she greeted with a short bow. "We were just going over the data on the anomaly..."

"I know, Skuld," the elder god told her, holding up a hand to forestall her. "And that's why I've come. I knew you would all be working feverishly on this and I did not want what I'm about to say to be lost in a communique or email somewhere."

Skuld arched an eyebrow. "Which is?"

"I have spoken with the Almighty," Michael told her. "And He has declared that we needn't worry about this occurrence."

Sighs of relief filled the room, but Skuld simply gave him a look of disbelief. "We needn't?" she asked.

"No," Michael assured her with a smile.

"Why not?" she asked. "Did he create this anomaly?"

"I would assume so," Michael replied.

"'Assume?'" Skuld said incredulously.

"He doesn't exactly explain everything," Michael told her. "Not even to me."

"Okay, well, I need more," Skuld told him. "This thing has already killed one of my Valkyries. I have two ships in the fourth spiral arm watching it. I need to know how far this thing is going to go, where to pull my people back. Did he talk to Hild? How is she going to react to this thing? I need..."

"Commander," Michael halted her. He paused and regrouped, obviously perturbed by her questions. "I understand your concerns, and I will attempt to find clarification with the Almighty. Until then, I think we should simply feel relieved that this is part of His great plan and not an impending cataclysm, yes?"

She took a breath. "Of course I am relieved," she told him, biting back her ire. "But unfortunately, my job doesn't end there. The next realm on its list is filled with sentients. I need more information, and I thank you in advance for any you can provide me."

Michael smiled and gave her a nod. "Of course." He turned and acknowledged the other Valkyrie officers. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said before turning and leaving the conference room.

The others sat down. Shara leaned over to her and whispered in her ear.

"You get the feeling we just got told to shut the fuck up?"

Skuld cleared her throat and turned to the others. "Well," she began, "It appears that we... 'needn't worry.'" She paused for a moment. "Even so, let's keep an eye on this thing as well as extra eyes on the Demon Realm. Until I get enough information to be satisfied, we're going to continue to treat this thing like a threat."

Her Operations Officer, Agrona, broke in. "The _Meriadoc_ and the _Gwydion_ are in Realm 700 now," she said. "Do you want them pulled back to somewhere... um... safer?"

"Tell them to hold position for now," Skuld ordered. "If things start to..."

Lt. Tryss's face snapped onto the display in front of them. "Excuse me, Ma'am, please pardon the interruption, but your sister is trying to contact you."

"Tell her I'll have to call her back," Skuld told her, already turning her attention back to Agrona.

"I have, Ma'am," Tryss told her. "Twice. She says it's very important. She seems very upset."

Skuld sighed. She had a feeling about what this was. "Okay, I'll take it here," she said, picking up the pearl-inlaid rotary phone sitting on the table in front of her. She gave it a second before speaking. "Oneesama, it's me."

"Oh, Skuld! You have to help me! Keiichi's gone!" the panicked voice of her sister came back.

Yeah, she had a feeling this was it. Her brother-in-law's death was obviously affecting Belldandy more than she anticipated. "Okay, Oneesama," she said soothingly. "Just take a deep breath and don't worry. You do what you have to do on Earth, and I'll meet him at the AOC and bring him to Mom's house."

"No! I'm at the AOC now! They can't find him! Skuld, they can't find him anywhere!"

Skuld froze. "What do you mean they 'can't find him?'" she demanded.

"He's not in the system at all!" Belldandy cried. "Not alive, not dead! Nothing! Skuld, please help me!"

"Okay, okay," Skuld said in a voice she hoped would soothe her sister's obviously racked nerves. "Listen to me. Belldandy? Are you listening?"

"Hai..."

"Okay," Skuld began slowly. "Here's what I want you to do. Stay at the AOC. I'm going to come find you, and we're going to figure this out, all right? Just stay there."

"Hai... I will," Belldandy told her.

"Okay," Skuld said. "I'll be there soon. Stay there." With that, she hung up the phone and took a breath. Looking up, she saw every Valkyrie's eyes on her.

She cleared her throat, fully cognizant of the fact that she was about to blow off what could be an apocalypse to go help her sister. In her mind, however, she simply had no choice. She knew Belldandy would do the same for her... and so would Keiichi.

_Dammit, Keiichi, you baka!_ she thought. _You can't even die right..._

"D3 keeps an eye on the anomaly," she announced, nodding to Agrona. "D2 watches the Demons. If Michael, the Grigori or anyone else takes issue with what we're doing, send them to me. Questions?"

"What if it gets to Realm 701?" someone asked.

The room went silent. As Skuld herself had pointed out, there were seven billion people in that realm, and while it wasn't the job of the Combat Division to provide relief during natural disasters, which she was willing to call this anomaly for the moment, the Division was probably the only organization large enough in Heaven to respond... should her father wish it.

She cleared her throat. "At this point," she began, "We can only place our trust in The Almighty that all will unfold as he wills," she said diplomatically. "Anything else?"

"All right, back to work," she said, rising to her feet.

Shara put a hand on her shoulder. "Everything all right?" she asked. "You need any help?"

"My brother-in-law's soul seems to be missing," Skuld told her quietly. "As in, he's not in the system."

"That sounds familiar," Shara told her, equally quiet. "Coincidence?"

"Almighty only knows," the brunette told her. "I need to go help my sister. Keep an eye on things here. If something pops, call me."

"You got it," Shara assured her.

888

The sight of her sister sitting on a padded bench near the AOC's Earth gate broke Skuld's heart. She was staring at the floor while several info-techs worked at a station nearby, undoubtedly trying to figure out what the problem was.

Belldandy must have sensed her presence, because at that moment she raised her tear-filled eyes and found her there. The goddess leapt up and embraced her little sister.

"Oh, Skuld," she whimpered. "They can't find him."

Skuld embraced her tightly. "It's going to be okay," she said. "We'll find him."

"I just don't understand how this can happen," Belldandy went on. "Even if he ended up in the Demon Realm, Yggdrasil would be able to see him. How can this be?"

The fate of Lt. Kazarin, the Valkyrie who had been swallowed up by the anomaly, leapt to Skuld's mind. "I don't know," she answered honestly. "But let me tell you what we're going to do. I'm going to take you home, and we're going to call Peorth. I'm sure these techs here are very good at looking at arrival schedules, but you know they can't hold a candle to what Peorth can do. We'll ask her to look."

Belldandy nodded, her rational side knowing the futility of staying at the AOC.

"Stay here for a minute," she said. "I want to make sure these guys have our contact info in case Keiichi pops out of the gate later all confused." She gave Belldandy another squeeze and made her way to the techs.

She had been optimistic for Belldandy's sake. Out of earshot now, she was less so.

"Okay, folks, give me some good news."

Looking up and seeing one of the top five goddesses in Heaven threw the techs for a loop, but they recovered quickly.

"Milady, I have no idea what happened," one of the techs, a manager by the look of him, told her. "I'll be honest, if I didn't already know of Belldandy's reputation for being a truth-teller, I would have thought she had made this guy up. He doesn't appear anywhere in the system."

"But Yggdrasil has a record of his life, right?" Skuld asked.

"Right, but that record stops at the point of his mortal death," the manager told her. "Now, when that happens, it's just a code change to reflect his change of status and the record continues, but this time it just stopped. If his soul had sublimated there would be a record of that, but there's nothing. He simply disappeared from the face of Creation."

Skuld gave him a hard look. "Well, he went _somewhere_."

The manager sighed. "We're going to keep looking for him, but we only have a fraction of Yggdrasil's processing power available to us."

The Division commander nodded. "I'm going to take my sister home." She handed him her card. "If you find anything, call me."

"Yes, Milady, of course."

888

It was raining when the two of them popped out of a nexus near the home Belldandy had been preparing for her and Keiichi, almost as if someone was twisting the knife in her sister's gut. But rather than rush inside, Belldandy hesitated outside the quaint, brick house with its perfect garden and patio. She stood there in the rain, looking up at it.

"This was to be our home," Belldandy told her in a soft whisper.

Skuld put a hand on her shoulder. "And it will be," she assured her. "He'll turn up."

"In sixty years, Skuld, I've never spent a night away from him," Belldandy told her softly. "I... don't know how. All I know is that I'm going to spend the first night in our new home... and it's going to be empty."

The younger goddess bit her lip and nodded. "You're right," Skuld said suddenly, prompting Belldandy to turn to her. "So you're not going to stay here until you and Keiichi are back together again. Go inside, pack a bag." She smiled at her sister. "You'll stay with me until the two of you are ready to move in."

Belldandy smiled even as tears pooled in her eyes. "Thank you, Skuld."

"I'll wait out here, okay?" Skuld told her. "Get going."

The middle Norn walked to the front door, and Skuld pulled out her cell phone.

"NOSC, this is Calypso," a feminine voice answered.

"May I speak to Peorth, please?" Skuld asked.

"Oh... um... Actually..."

"I thought she worked this shift," Skuld pressed.

"And she does... usually..." Calypso answered. "It's just that..."

"She's a friend of mine," Skuld told her. "You can spit it out."

"Well, Ms. Peorth just ended a serious relationship, and she... um... wasn't feeling well..."

Skuld squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed the bridge of her nose with her fingers. "Tell you what," she said irritably. "Let me tell you what happened, and you tell me if I'm close. Peorth got dumped, and now she's dealing with it the best way she knows how; getting wasted and singing bad karaoke in a bar somewhere."

"...and we don't know where," Calypso finished.

"Then use Yggdrasil to find her location," Skuld suggested through grit teeth.

"It's not an emergency, and so directing Yggdrasil computing power to something like that..."

Skuld had had enough. "This is a Combat Division RFI," she stated firmly. "Authorization: Skuld-one-one-seven-beta. I want to know where Peorth is at this moment. Are you going to get me that information, or do I need to send a couple of my own techs to do it?"

She could hear the woman swallow on the other end of the line. "One moment, please, Ma'am."

Skuld waited impatiently. Something she had discovered after joining the Combat Division was the difference in the level of urgency placed on tasks between a Valkyrie and a regular goddess. Valkyries considered every individual task a mission, and mission accomplishment was the driving force for every Valkyrie. For other goddesses, however, their jobs weren't the primary focus of their lives, and so were often not performed to the same level.

"I'm sorry, Ma'am, but we don't know where she is," Calypso told her.

A quick shiver ran through Skuld. "You mean she's not in the system?" she breathed into the phone.

"Oh! No! She's in the system!" Calypso assured her. "It's just that... well... she does this sometimes where she rigs things so she's harder to find..."

Skuld grit her teeth. She didn't have time to search Creation for Keiichi _and_ Peorth.

"Keep looking, and call me as soon as you know her location," she said.

"Actually, Ma'am, she'll probably just turn up when..."

"Calypso," Skuld growled, "Do you know what a 'selective conscription' is?"

The other goddess paused in confusion. "Um... No?"

"It's where the Combat Division determines that a specific god's skill-set is so vital to the defense of Heaven, that that god or goddess can be _forced_ into the Combat Division until the Division's commander releases her from service." She paused. "And I'm starting to think I _really_ need an Yggdrasil tech working at our outpost on near the Demon Realm," she finished.

"I'll keep looking, and as soon as I find her I'll call you!" Calypso assured her quickly.

"I know you will," Skuld said just as Belldandy reappeared in the house's doorway. "Thank you very much for all your help."

She closed the cell phone and took a cleansing breath as Belldandy approached, a small red suitcase in her hand. "Was that about Keiichi san?" she asked quickly.

"No, Peorth," Skuld told her. "They're trying to track her down for us." She offered her sister a smile. "Come on. Let's go home."

888

The building nestled in the small cove had once been a tuna canning plant, but that must have been a hundred years ago. The white paint and much of the wood under it had rotted to nothing, and the machines were still, quietly rusting away. Only the moon offered any light through a large hole in the roof, illuminating where she stood and reflecting off her hair.

A mournful horn sounded in the distance. Someone, somewhere was still fishing these waters even if they brought their tuna elsewhere.

She didn't move, didn't check her watch or shift impatiently. She had decided that coming here was worth her time and was therefore prepared to spend it...

... even if he had been here for ten minutes already, watching her from the dark.

It was a matter of pride now. She had known he was there from the beginning, and he had known she knew. Now it was just a matter of who was going to let on first.

Perhaps because it was he who had asked her to come, he felt the need to step out first. It was the hospitable thing to do, after all. He stepped into another point of light made by the moon, his hands at either side to show himself as harmless.

"I have to say," he noted unctuously. "I like the new you. What is that body, sixteen?"

"Eighteen," she corrected casually, her violet eyes tracking his movements.

"Did you come alone?" he asked.

"Of course."

"Eighteen," he purred. "Nice and legal..."

"Do you have any news about my daughter?" she asked, getting right to the point of things.

"Let's not rush things," he said with a smile. "It's been a long time. We should talk."

She took a breath and shook her head. "Fine," she muttered. "The hard way then." She cocked her head to one side, and without warning it seemed as though the darkness on either side of him had come to life, reaching out with cold hands and grabbing his arms. Something struck him in the back of the legs, and he fell to his knees, the dark hands holding him immobile.

She approached him now, walking through the darkness toward his part of the light, completely comfortable with her mastery of the shadows.

He looked to either side of him at the things that held him, almost casually. Knowledge of what they were took some of the fear from their arsenal. "You said you came alone," he noted.

"And you said you had information about my daughter," she replied, leaning down and brushing a lock of moonlight hair from her forehead, displaying just for a moment the sigil on her forehead, the left half of what was once a crimson six-pointed star.

"Of a sort," he replied.

"I've no time for your games, Loki," she told him, rising to her full height. "Right now, accurate and actionable information will save your life, but I wouldn't wait too long to offer it up. My Elites are not the most patient of sentients."

"It has to do with the quote-unquote anomaly," he told her with some mirth. "Do you know what it is?"

She leaned down again. "Much better than you," she said. "And as I know that for a fact, your use to me is zero." She rose again and addressed the bodyguards holding him. "Make it quick." She turned as the Elites drew shadow-blades.

"Aren't you at all interested in _how_ I know about the quote-unquote anomaly?" he asked, still in control of the game and knowing it.

She raised a hand, stopping her bodyguards from their ordered action. Turning back to him, she studied the god, her gaze burrowing into him. "I know what you are," she told him quietly. "You comment on my body, but at least it's mine. You wear yours like a disguise. Perhaps that's why no one in Creation likes your kind. Your very existence resides under a blanket of deception. So why should I believe that you will tell me any kind of truth now?"

"You wouldn't have come out here if you really thought that," he told her.

She thought on that for a moment. "Very well," she said. "I will listen to your story and take what entertainment from it I can. You may proceed."

He smiled, and she hated it. "Well, to begin with, as you mentioned, you have a better understanding of what the quote-unquote anomaly is and..."

"If he uses the term 'quote-unquote' again," she told her Elites, "... cut off his hand."

Loki heard the Elite on his right hiss in acknowledgement and decided to get to the point. "It's early," he told her. "And while you know what it is and how such a thing comes to be... you don't know why it's early... and that bothers you."

This time Hild said nothing.

"But for the Favrashi," he went on, "it's right on time."

888

"Please pardon the mess," Skuld begged as the two goddesses stepped into her apartment. "I don't get a whole lot of time to clean and when I do...well... I just don't want to."

Belldandy took a look at the place her sister called home and smiled. Her sister's office was clean and tidy, but this place, with its tables covered in half-finished machines and inventions... this was the Skuld she knew.

"It's wonderful," she said simply. "Thank you for letting me stay."

"It's no problem," Skuld replied. "You can have the bedroom. I usually fall asleep at my desk anyway."

Belldandy wandered around the main living area, getting a sense of the place. It was obviously maintained in a frenzied manner, and while it looked like things were simply strewn about, Belldandy instinctively knew that everything was currently in the exact spot it was meant to be.

She paused as something shiny on the table caught her eye. Stepping toward it, she leaned over for a better look. It almost look like a modern art sculpture, the head of a dragon made of golden metal and glass about the size of a football. She blinked at it for a moment, then...

'HELLLLLLLP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" it suddenly screamed at her.

Belldandy shrieked in surprise and jumped back, her hand going to her chest. As she caught her breath, she heard the sound of laughter coming from the disembodied head.

Skuld was standing nearby a second later, her finger raised in warning. "Not funny, Professor!" she admonished.

The dragon head snorted. "Oh, I do disagree," it replied with a clipped snooty accent. "Oh, come now, Skuld, I was just trying to have a little fun! It's so rare that you have guests."

"Wha... Who..." Belldandy breathed.

"Seriously," the robot head, the Professor, told her. "Months on end with no one else here, and when she does bring home guests it's always goddesses like that vile Shara woman. What would you call the female equivalent of a sausage fest? A clam bake? We'll go with that..."

Skuld rolled her eyes. "Belldandy, this is my unofficial roommate. I call him the Professor."

Content that there was, in fact, no danger, Belldandy stepped forward again. "A robot dragon's head?" she asked.

"Yeah," Skuld said. "It was kind of during the overlap between my 'dragons are awesome' phase and my 'can create life but not quite sure how to keep it from happening on accident' period. I was working on him one day and BAM! A new annoying life form."

"I could say the same about meeting you," the Professor told her.

"Why do you call him the Professor?" Belldandy asked.

"Well, as you can surely guess, there's not much for a head to do during the day while Skuld's at work, so I spend most of my time learning, getting various degrees from institutions of higher learning through a fake online identity," he explained. "I have 31 doctorates and I'm currently teaching an online course at MIT."

"Computer science?" Belldandy guessed.

"French lit," he corrected. "Just to mess with their heads I teach the entire course in German. Oh, it does piss them off so..."

Belldandy blinked. "Skuld chan... why don't you just build him a body?"

Skuld took her sister by the arm and led her a few feet away. "Do you know what kind of trouble I can get into for bringing robot dragons to life, Oneesama?" she asked in a whisper.

"So you just keep him here... like this?" Belldandy asked.

"If it makes you feel better," Skuld replied tightly, "He's kind of a jerk."

"And what is your name, young lady?" the Professor asked.

The question actually made Belldandy smile. No one had called her "young lady" in a long time. "I'm Belldandy, Skuld's sister."

"So be nice," Skuld warned him dangerously.

"Of course, of course," the dragon head replied dismissively. "Well, let me give you the tour," he said. "Behind me is the kitchen, which I never get to see because Skuld thinks me watching her eat is quote... 'totes-creepy...'"

Skuld sighed.

"To my right is the door to the bedroom that Skuld never uses, either for intended or recreational purposes..."

"I'd melt him down," Skuld informed Belldandy through clenched teeth, "except that there isn't a forge hot enough to melt the alloy I used for his skull..."

"You could always take me to Mount Doom," he pointed out. "Except you're too lazy..."

"It's not laziness," she retorted. "I'm actually smart enough to fly there rather than walk."

"She keeps me around to torture me, you see," he told Belldandy.

"Okay, tour's over," Skuld announced.

"But I didn't get to your creepy little shrine in the corner," the Professor, told her as she picked him up, tossed him a desk drawer and closed it.

"We'll live," she assured him.

"You know," he called through the metal panel of the desk drawer, "I can still make myself heard through here."

"It's not about shutting you up," she replied. "It's about sticking you in a dark, cramped place content with the knowledge that it'll slowly drive you insane." She grinned.

There was silence for a moment.

"Touche," he conceded.

"So," Skuld began, clapping the dust from her hands. "Where were we?" She turned and found Belldandy standing in the corner, studying the aforementioned shrine. Skuld took a breath before joining her there.

"I don't have this picture of them," Belldandy commented about the three dimensional image sitting atop a simple pedestal flanked on either side by a single flower. "I didn't think they ever took one together."

"They didn't," Skuld told her. "I took one of Urd and an old one I found of Sensei and mashed them together." She shrugged shyly as if she had been caught doing something she shouldn't have. "I just seemed appropriate somehow."

Belldandy smiled and nodded. "Hai, I agree." She looked at the base of the shrine and found several gold coins piled there. "Are these Gwydion's?" she asked.

"Yeah," Skuld said, turning and heading toward the kitchen to make some tea. "He didn't have any family left... not after Yazlyn, Gaeriel and Lind were killed." She put on a pot of water as she spoke. "I looked around for awhile, trying to find someone who was close to him, but it turned out I was about it." She paused. "It's kind of sad. All those years as a teacher, and I'm the only one who was close enough to inherit his memories."

"You were his student," Belldandy told her. "His last student. And he would be proud of how far you've come. Oneesan too."

"Maybe," she allowed with a smile. "He had an interesting life," Skuld went on, trying to change the subject away from her. "If you ever want to get a case of the creeps, check out the coin that deals with Moder."

"Moder?" Belldandy asked with a confused blink.

"Mm hmm," Skuld confirmed. "Turns out they knew each other before she and Father got married, back when they were real young." She broke off and cleared her throat. "Really well..."

Belldandy cocked her head. "How well?" she asked, intrigued by this new bit of family gossip.

"Well," Skuld said with a grin. "Let's just say that were it not for a well-timed deployment to the third spiral arm about a year before you were born, there would be some _very_ uncomfortable questions about where your proclivity for writing comes from."

Belldandy nearly laughed at the scandal of it all. "You made that up!"

"Well... I embellished a little," Skuld admitted. "They did know each other, and there was definitely something between them, but he never came out and said it. You can read between the lines, though."

The older Norn laughed. "Well... now we know why Moder always trusted him."

"Yeah," Skuld replied evenly. Before she could say more, her cell phone went off. She put it to her ear. "Skuld," she announced.

"Ma'am, this is Calypso at the NOSC," Belldandy barely heard from the speaker. "We found Ms. Peorth. I'm texting you her location now."

"Thanks," Skuld said, checking her phone for the information. "Got it. Anything else I need to know?"

"She appears somewhat... um... Well.. I don't think she's feeling well..."

"She's wasted," Skuld concluded dryly. "Got it. Thanks again."

She hung up and looked to her sister. "Let's go get Peorth."

888

"Do you think he can be trusted?"

Hild didn't bother turning to him, instead choosing to hold her gaze on the "god" standing on the other side of the mirror, oblivious to their presence in the next room. Her eyes tracked him like a hawk, trying to divine reason in every move he made.

"Of course not," she spat. "His very existence revolves around fucking over as many people as he can. But..." She bit her lip in thought. "What he offers... it's not only my daughter, it could be our very survival."

The order of priorities in Hild's list was not lost on Metheus. That was simply how the world worked now, ever since the end of the war. Like every demon, he had been forced to make a choice. His choice was fortunate because this Hild had been the victor. It was unfortunate because this Hild had changed the entire way demons did business. He remembered a time when a demon's role in life was to secure shares, convert demons, and undermine Heaven. But that was under a different Daimakaicho. Things were different now.

But he did miss the old days.

"Then should we follow his proposed plan?" Metheus asked, the gray orb of his only good eye searching his mistress for some inkling of her thoughts in this. "Why not just kill him and seek our princess out in our own fashion?"

"Because he's _good_ at fucking people over," Hild told him. "His plan will work." She turned to him. "It's worth the risk."

"It could bring down the entire Demon Realm," Metheus warned her.

"It's worth the risk," Hild repeated dangerously. Turning back to the mirror, she watched as Loki examined himself in the mirror. The trickster god, Favrashi, however one wanted to view him, smiled at the mirror and waved to them.

"We'll let him find my daughter," Hild told Metheus. "_Then_ we'll kill him."

888

"Why do you think she came here?" Skuld asked as the two sisters entered the basement-level dive in downtown Nekomi. "I would have put money on Paris or New Orleans... Actually," she went on. "I'm not sure I would have bet on Earth at all."

"Perhaps it's a haven for her," Belldandy hypothesized. They stood in the door and scanned the dark, gritty place, searching for a familiar face. "I know that some of her happiest memories were here in Nekomi," the Norn continued almost sadly. "So if she cannot grieve in Heaven, perhaps this is the next best thing."

"There she is," Skuld told her, nodding to the bar. "Come on."

Peorth hadn't changed much in 25 or 60 years, depending on your point of view, but she at least knew enough not to wear her usual outfit to a place like this. She wanted to blend in enough to avoid conversation, so she wore slacks and a plain red blouse. The Norns took the stools on either side of her.

"What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" Skuld asked her gamely.

Peorth smiled as she continued to stare into an unknown amber-colored beverage. "I should have known you would find me," she said, addressing Belldandy. "I rather hoped you would, actually."

"I'm sorry," Belldandy told her sincerely. "Had I been on Earth and sensed your grief... and had not been indisposed... I would have come to comfort you."

"It's all right," Peorth told her. "You have your own life. I should learn to live mine."

"So what's his name?" Skuld asked.

"Vazel," Peorth declared, taking a sip from her drink with a grimace. "And I really thought he was the one."

Skuld waved over the bartender and ordered a pot of coffee while Belldandy rested her hand on Peorth's. "The one will come," she assured her gently. "It just takes time."

Peorth stuck her tongue out and gave that idea a raspberry. "What do you know about it?" she asked irritably. "You met the love of your life and it just clicked!" She tried snapping her fingers, but failed, nearly falling out of her stool. "No, I have to put work into it. Find a guy, clean him up, teach him to not be such an asshole and then BAM!" She slapped the bar. "He's fucking one of my techs."

"Calypso?" Skuld asked.

Peorth looked at her. "How did you..."

"She sounded guilty of something," Skuld said quickly. "Peorth," she began, pushing a cup of coffee at her, "I'm sorry that you're hurting right now, but we really need your help."

"You should ask Calypso," Peorth answered snidely. "I have it on good authority that she gives better head anyway..."

"Please, Peorth," Belldandy begged. "It's Keiichi san."

The other goddess turned to her and blinked. "Monsieur Keiichi?" she slurred. "What about him?"

"He died this morning," Skuld answered for her sister. "And he didn't show up in Heaven."

"Quoi?" Peorth replied, stunned in spite of herself. "The Demons got him?"

"No," Belldandy said. "He didn't show up anywhere. He's just gone."

"That doesn't happen," Peorth told them, pushing herself out of her seat and wobbly standing up. "It's simply a change in his function code. Two mouse clicks and an enter key, that's it."

"Well, the NOSC can't find him," Skuld told her. "Anywhere."

Peorth grunted and reached into her purse to pay her tab. "Calypso is probably too busy giving handjobs to other goddessess' boyfriends," she spat. "Fear not, Belldandy, I will find Ke..."

Skuld sighed as Peorth hit the floor and started snoring. Belldandy knelt next to her friend and took her hand.

"I'm sorry that my grief must intrude on yours," she told her unconscious friend sadly. "I promise that once Keiichi is found, I will help you find the happy ending you seek for your own story."

"Let's get her up," Skuld said with another sigh. "We'll take her back to my place and sober her up."

The two goddesses lifted Peorth up and supported her on either side.

"Do you think she can really find Keiichi san?" Belldandy asked her sister.

"If he's anywhere in Creation, she'll find him," Skuld told her definitively, even as doubt gnawed at her.

888

Peorth snorted a bit as she hit Skuld's sofa, and her eyes fluttered open. The French goddess's eyes absorbed her surroundings, and she frowned. "This doesn't look like the temple," she noted.

"It's not," Belldandy told her, placing a cup of tea on the coffee table near her. "We're in Skuld's apartment in Heaven."

"We call it the Clam Bake!" the Professor piped up helpfully from Skuld's desk.

Skuld tossed him in a drawer as she walked by and knelt next to her friend. "How are you feeling?"

"Quite awful," Peorth told her. She sat up and took the cup of tea from Belldandy. "Explain this to me again," she implored.

"Keiichi is missing, and he doesn't show up anywhere in Creation," Belldandy supplied.

"And you're certain that the Demon Realm didn't get him?" Peorth asked.

"He doesn't show up anywhere," Skuld told her. "I'm going to have my intelligence folks take a look too, and if necessary, there are other avenues I can check, but if Yggdrasil is to be believed, he simply doesn't exist."

Peorth finished her tea. "I need a terminal," she said. "It doesn't have to be in the NOSC, just something with access to the World Tree."

"There's one in the corner," Skuld told her. "Help yourself."

The goddess carefully made her way to the terminal and sat down. "There are things about Creation," she began, "That are simply too hard to explain. You learn about them as you explore the system, see _how_ Yggdrasil does things, how the tree itself thinks."

She started typing as Skuld and Belldandy watched over her shoulder.

"And a lot of the time," Peorth went on, "You learn to do things that they don't teach in the manual, ways to look past what the tree is doing." She continued typing. "And enter this... and hit this... aaaaaaand..." She hit the enter key. "He's not here."

"We knew that," Skuld told her.

Peorth rubbed her temples. "All right, all right... So it will be harder than expected, that's fine." She started typing again. "I will need more coffee."

"I'll make some," Belldandy promised, rushing to the kitchen.

"What do you really think?" Skuld asked her quietly so that Belldandy wouldn't hear.

"Truly?" Peorth whispered back as she typed. "What you're telling me isn't even possible in _theory._"

"Well, that's heartening," Skuld sighed. Before she could say anything else, her phone rang. Picking it up, she placed it to her ear. "Skuld," she announced.

"Commander, this is Lt. Tryss in the TOC," the technician's voice replied. "We need you to come in right away."

"Why?" Skuld asked. "What's happened?"

"It's the anomaly, Ma'am," Tryss told her. "It's moved into Realm 701."

Skuld felt a ball of ice fall into her stomach. She took a breath. "Recall the battle staff," she directed. "And stand up the Future Operations Cell. And contact the Chief of Staff's office. Tell Michael I want to talk to him about seven billion people who 'needn't worry' about the anomaly."

"Yes, Ma'am."

The line clicked off, and Skuld took another breath.

"Problem?" Peorth asked her.

"You could call it that," Skuld said. She put a hand on Peorth's shoulder. "Stay with her, okay?"

"Oui," Peorth promised. "We will call you when I find Monsieur Keiichi."

"Don't," Skuld told her, heading to the door. At Peorth's questioning look, Skuld finished. "I'll be too busy to talk."

888

There was a flash of light, and then he was falling, falling through darkness, and then...

He could have landed in grass, or mud, or water, but instead he managed to land on top of the only boulder for three hundred yards and bounce off, falling another ten yards and landing on his back in a thicket of bushes.

Rolling out of the thicket, he coughed as cold new air rushed into his lungs. He hurt everywhere, and he lay on his side, his mouth opened in a silent scream of agony before sucking in another lungful of air and coughing all over again.

He lay there for several minutes as the pain began to subside. Swallowing, he rolled onto his back, and it was the feeling of the pine needles against his back that was first indication that he was naked. Looking up at the sky, he saw stars, millions of them, telling him that wherever he was, there was no light pollution, no cities or towns nearby.

Reaching up, he gingerly grasped at one of the branches he had landed in and pulled himself up. He still ached all over, but it was better than before. He looked down at his hand but could barely see it in the starlight.

Where was he?

A forest, obviously, and a forest far from civilization. Perhaps he should stay put until daylight rather than try to run naked through the woods in the middle of the night.

The sound of rustling branches nearby threw that option right out the window. Struggling to his feet, he turned toward the sound. There... in the distance... a faint glow moving through the trees.

But from what?

He instinctively took a step back and heard a sharp crack from the twig his foot just broke. The glow stopped moving.

"Shit," he muttered.

The unearthly light started toward him, and he turned, moving quickly but carefully through the forest. He didn't know what that light was or who it might be, but until he knew more about just what was going on, he wasn't going to take chances.

He could hear rustling behind him as the light followed him. Turning to his left, he saw it bound around him, moving inhumanly fast. He put on speed, branches slapping at his face as he ran. He held his hands out in a vain effort to protect himself, but in the dark they still found him.

He almost hit the stone wall in front of him, but managed to stop just in time, slipping in the dirt and falling on his rear. Looking up, he saw the light crest the top of the wall, aiming down at him. He held his hands up.

"Don't shoot," he called tiredly.

The light dimmed, allowing him to focus on it for the first time. The light came from a ball held by a lithe figure that looked down at him, a woman, he saw now. Her short red hair fell just behind her neck. Although she wore a dark cloak, he could make out an attractive figure beneath it. Her expression was one of concern.

"Are you all right?" she called down to him, his nudity not throwing her off in the slightest.

"I think so," he called back. "Kinda cold," he said in embarrassment.

"I bet," the redhead agreed. "Do you remember your name?"

The question made him pause. Now that she mentioned it...

He started to panic. He couldn't remember his name. It was the most absurd thing he had ever heard of... or... at least he thought so. If she had thought to ask, maybe she could help.

"No," he answered. "I can't."

"It's okay," she told him. "I'll help you."

He took a breath and said the only thing he could think of. "Thanks."

The woman hopped nimbly down from the stone wall and approached him, removing her green cloak and kneeling down to wrap it around him.

"Who are you?" he asked.

The redhead smiled at him. "I am the goddess Belldandy," she said. "And everything is going to be okay."

_To be continued..._


	3. Angel, Angel What Have I Done?

AMG belongs to Kosuke Fujishima.

Dedication: To IdiAmeanDada. I said the odds were low, not zero.

**Blessings: Shattered Sky**

**Chapter 3**

**Angel, Angel What Have I Done?**

* * *

_Dear Lenus,_

_Not a whole lot of time to write. Meeting starts in five minutes, but I had to talk to someone about this. I've never questioned The Almighty, but the moment Michael said we shouldn't worry about this thing, I knew something was off. My father, by nature of his position, has done a lot of things that seem awful to some, but there was always a reason behind it. Knowing that, I still can't fathom a reason behind killing seven billion people. I wish you were here._

_Skuld_

* * *

"We think it moved into 701 when the outer edge of the anomaly in 702 touched a hardline conduit," Dr. Seshat, the Combat Division's Science and Technology advisor told the assembled Valkyries. An image appeared in front of the group in 3-D. It looked like a large, black tornado churning in place in the center of a suburban neighborhood. "For the first time, we are seeing the anomaly in its initial phase," Seshat continued. "The approximate epicenter coincides with a hardline leading to Realm 702."

"Where in 701 is it now?" Skuld asked quickly.

"The south-east corner of the smallest continent, expanding erratically," Seshat replied. "However, going by the average and the rate we've seen so far, the inhabited part of the realm will be consumed in somewhere between six and eight days."

"That fast?" a colonel to Skuld's left, the commander of the 502nd, asked in shock.

"That fast," Seshat assured her.

"What does Michael say?" another officer piped up.

Skuld grit her teeth, the aftertaste of her thoroughly unsatisfying conversation with the chief of staff fresh in her mind. "We are not directed to act," she repeated.

"What in the name of Jupiter's left nut is that supposed to mean?" Shara asked from her right.

Skuld stood up and planted her palms on the table. "It means whatever I choose it to mean," she said, knowing that despite how insubordinate it might sound, it was exactly what Michael had intended. He hadn't given her a direction, as if he and the Almighty were washing their hands of this situation. If there was to be action, it would be on Skuld's authority alone.

"And I choose to act," she went on. "We are evacuating Realm 701."

A shocked murmur filled the room. Not even in the darkest days of the War Against God had an entire realm been evacuated.

"Seven billion people in six days?!" someone asked in disbelief.

"No," Skuld said, crestfallen. She looked at Seshat. "I'm good with numbers too. It's impossible to get them all out." She recovered her momentum. "But we can get some."

"Just open up the hardlines and start shuttling them through," Shara said in support.

"No," Seshat vetoed. "We still don't understand how this thing works. Opening hardlines like that could lead it to other realms. We must be very cautious."

"Okay," Skuld said, "The old fashioned way then. The _Gwydion_ and the _Meriadoc_ are still in Realm 700. They can start evacuating people right away. The _Valentine_ is only three realms away and can be there in a day."

"They're a primitive people with an overblown idea of their own importance," Shara told her. "They're too ignorant to know what we are and too conceited to believe us when we tell them."

"They're like people on Earth," Skuld said in reply. "I know what people on Earth are like. And I know that no matter what they think we are, if the choice is between coming with us or getting sucked into that..." She pointed at the black swirling cloud on the screen and left the comment unfinished. "Shara, I want you to go to Realm 505 and prepare to receive them."

"You got it, Boss," the Valkyrie replied.

Skuld caught the eyes of the rest of her officers. "Issue sailing orders to those ships and every other ship you can find," she said. "Evacuation operations start in two hours. Get moving!"

888

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Belldandy asked for what seemed like the tenth time to Peorth. "I could get on another terminal and..."

Peorth didn't look up from the monitor as she typed. "No offense, Cheri, but it's been decades since you even touched one of these terminals," she said. "It would actually take longer for me to teach you the new protocols instituted after The Day than for me to simply find what we're looking for."

The Day. It wasn't just the years Belldandy spent away from Heaven that made her feel like an outsider in her own home town. It was The Day. She had been fortunate enough to miss the day the Favrashi attacked Heaven. While she had been putting up with Keiichi's racist grandmother, Favrashi had locked down most of the buildings in Heaven and were going home to home, killing everyone they found in the building before moving onto the next. If it hadn't been for Skuld, Urd and Gwydion...

To those who had lived through it, it was simply "The Day," and unconsciously it seemed that gods were now divided based on their proximity to the events of that day. Either you had survived it, or you hadn't been there.

Peorth had survived it. Other goddesses Belldandy had known, like her father's secretary, Miranda, hadn't.

Feeling even more lonely than she had before, Belldandy stepped away from her friend and tried to find something to do with herself.

Peorth, sensing Belldandy's mood, tried to make conversation. "I haven't seen your mother yet," she said. "I thought she would be here by now."

"As would I," Belldandy replied. "I called her a few times, but there was no answer."

"Perhaps she's dealing with the same thing Skuld is?" Peorth ventured as she typed.

"Perhaps," Belldandy allowed. Her head drooped sadly, and Peorth stopped typing, turning to study her.

"What is it?" Peorth asked in concern.

"It... doesn't feel like Heaven," Belldandy remarked. "I don't know why, and perhaps it's just that Keiichi san isn't here, but... it doesn't feel like I remember."

The other goddess turned back to her screen. "Perhaps because to you... it's no longer home."

Belldandy turned to her in surprise. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean if given the choice you would have been perfectly content to live the rest of your life on Earth with Monsieur Keiichi," Peorth went on. "And so Earth is home," she concluded with certainty.

"No," Belldandy replied quietly. "But you're close..."

_"If you had said that before we got engaged, I think maybe so," he said quietly. "But truth be told, now that you and I are really together, I'm not sure I could live without you. I've nearly lost you so many times in the past, and if demons and angel eaters couldn't break us up then I'm not about to let that shriveled old bat do it. If necessary, I'd take you and go somewhere else in the world, start over with you..."_

_"Keiichi, this is your home..."_

_He responded by embracing her. "No," he said into her ear. "That's what you don't understand, what you can't seem to get. My home is where ever you happen to be. This..." He squeezed her. "...is home!"_

Belldandy swallowed back tears as the memory and the answer to her question both crashed against her. Of course it didn't feel like home, and it wouldn't... not until they found Keiichi san.

She just felt so useless right now.

888

"The _Vincent_ and the _Isidore_ can be there in two days," Agrona told her. "_Meriadoc_, _Valentine_ and _Gwydion_ have begun removing people from the areas near the anomaly."

"Where's the _Rota_?" Skuld asked, looking up from the latest report.

"Three days," Agrona told her. "It is unfortunate, but the larger the ship the more energy it consumes moving from one realm to another, and therefore the slower it can do so."

"Yeah, I know," Skuld told her. "And word from Colonel Shara?"

"Her team is in 505, and they're setting up a camp for the refugees," Agrona told her. "The question is, what do we do with them? 505 is a wild realm. There's no facilities there. Their civilization is going to regress 25 centuries in the space of a week."

"Yeah, but they'll be alive," Skuld told her.

"What if it's only temporary?" Agrona asked her seriously.

"What do you mean?" Skuld asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She had spent 24 hours in her office with no sleep. She wondered briefly how Belldandy and Peorth were doing searching for Keiichi and wished again that she could be with them. She hoped her sister would understand.

"I mean," Agrona began quietly. "What if this thing keeps moving? What if we end up having to move these people again because it's going to hit 505?"

"I don't think we have to worry about that," Skuld said with a mirthless smile.

"Why?" Agrona asked, confused.

"Because _this_ realm sits between the two," Skuld told her. "If this thing gets to 505, it'll be because it's already run right over the top of us."

Agrona swallowed. "I hadn't thought of it like that."

Skuld took a breath. "It won't come to that."

"Are you sure?" her Ops Officer asked.

She met Agrona's eyes and answered honestly. "No."

888

The teeming mass of panic screamed as it instinctively fled the front of the storm that was sucking everything it encountered into it. They didn't know what it was because every time someone tried to get close enough to learn more about it, the storm sucked them in. It was killing people, and that's all they needed to know.

It seemed to chase them but that was only due to its size and the limited places the mass could run to. All of the boats had already left, there was only the ocean to meet them. Thousands and thousands of panicked people huddled on the beach as the front of the thing was now a half-mile away. Some tried to swim, madness. The nearest island was seventy miles away, but they tried anyway. If the choice was between the thing and the sharks, they chose the sharks.

The crowd looked up as something new complicated their world-ending dynamic. Something, not the thing, but something else, was descending. It was easily a half-mile long, dart-shaped but with elegant curves that spread from the tip to the end like wings. It hovered over them, moving silently through the wind kicked up by the thing's presence. From this strange craft's center, a beam of light descended, and members of the crowd began to float upward into it.

Suddenly, the choice was not just between the thing and the sharks. There was a third option.

And people began to rush toward it.

888

The floating hologram of the _Valentine's_ AI's interactive form appeared next to Ship Captain Telarus, taking the appearance of a robed young man and speaking with a soothing voice that had a calming effect on the crew even in the gravest of times. Times like this.

"We have begun taking on refugees," it informed Telarus. "However, their numbers are many, and the anomaly approaches quickly."

"Take as many as physically possible," Telarus told him. "We'll leave only a moment before the anomaly arrives."

"It shall be done, Ship Captain."

"Ship Captain, we're taking fire," one of the _Valentine's_ techs reported in surprise from his station nearby.

"From the anomaly?" Telarus asked, confused.

"From the ground," the tech told him.

"It would appear that some of the more panicked residents of this realm believe we mean them more harm than the anomaly," _Valentine_ told him.

"Can their weapons harm us?" Telarus asked.

"No," _Valentine_ reported. "However, the fire is frightening some mortals away from the area."

"Nothing for it," Telarus muttered. "Continue..."

"Ship Captain! A surge in readings from the an..."

Before the tech could finish, the _Valentine_ shook under them, nearly throwing Telarus to the ground.

"We just got smacked!" the tech finished. "Hull breaches in the aft compartments! All decks, all sections aft of compartment thirty-five!"

"Damage assessment teams aft!" Telarus ordered.

"I would not advise such a command," _Valentine_ noted calmly. "As there appears to be no matter aft of compartment thirty-five for them to assess..."

The hologram fizzled and went out. Telarus's eyes went wide. _"Valentine!_ Report!"

"He's gone!" the tech cried. "I'm not reading his matrix anywhere aboard the ship! We're dead in the water!"

Another technician chose this time to offer more bad news. "Ship Captain, we're losing altitude! We're thirty degrees nose-down and falling!"

"Prepare to abandon..."

Before the captain could finish, another surge of the anomaly swallowed the _Valentine_ and everyone in it.

888

Skuld had never seen the TOC in such utter chaos before. Even during Hild's civil war, there was a certain decorum that had to be met. Now, Valkyries were working urgently in their own little worlds, trying to determine what had just happened, trying to make sense of it through their own myopic viewpoints. But each piece they offered, though meaning little to them, let Skuld put the puzzle together.

"No reading on _Valentine!_ I've got nothing..."

"Double check the comm grid! Maybe it's interference!"

"Spatial mass is continuing to fall!"

"I've got _Gwydion_ Actual on the line!"

Skuld locked onto this last one. "Give him to me," she ordered, turning to the viewing cubes. The image of an older god appeared, Xeren, she remembered.

"Commander, are you monitoring the situation with the _Valentine_?" he asked her.

"Yes, Ship Captain," she returned. "Are you tracking any survivors?"

"Not on this side of the anomaly," he told her. He paused for a moment before continuing. "Ma'am, we are preparing to breach the anomaly to attempt a rescue."

Skuld was silent, all eyes on her. She took a breath before replying.

"No, Ship Captain," she said quietly. "Return to rescue operations. Get as many people out of that realm as you can."

Xeren offered her a cold look. "Commander," he began urgently. "I am confident that with the _Gwydion_'s advanced systems, we can pierce the storm front and..."

"Ship-Captain," Skuld interrupted. "I want you to return to the evacuations and stay no closer than five miles from the storm's edge at all times," she told him calmly. "The safety of those people is our first priority, and we cannot risk half of our remaining force..."

"There are over 300 gods on that ship!" Xeren snapped.

"I am well aware of the _Valentine's_ crew complement!" Skuld erupted at him. "Return to your assigned mission! TOC out!"

The screen went blank, and Skuld took a deep breath. She knew every eye in the TOC was pointed right at her. "Where are _Vincent _and _Isidore_?" she asked.

"Still a day away, Ma'am," one of her Valkyries reported.

"Well, you need to tell them to haul ass!" she snapped.

_That's it,_ she thought. _Enough bullshit._

"I'm going to Terminal Dogma," she announced. "Agrona, you're in charge until I get back. If Xeren tries anything stupid, you have the _Meriadoc_ fire on him, got it?!"

"Fire on one of our own ships?" Agrona asked in shock.

"If it means saving his stupid life, yes!" Skuld threw over her shoulder as she stormed out.

888

"AUUUUGGHHHH!" Peorth screamed at the ceiling.

"Something wrong?" Belldandy asked from the kitchen, a morose look sweeping her delicate features.

Peorth sighed and sat back in her chair, staring straight up. "Everything I know, everything I've learned, tells me that this shouldn't be possible, and yet I am thwarted at every turn!" She turned toward Belldandy and shook her head. "Cheri, the search functions are turning up absolutely nothing, which means one of two things: Either the truth is being hidden from us... or there _is_ no truth to uncover."

"So what do we do?" Belldandy asked quietly. "We can't give up..."

"Oh, of course we can't give up!" Peorth told her with a dismissive wave. "But it does mean the job is a hundred times more difficult than first anticipated. We are going to have to search Yggdrasil's database manually, page by page!"

"Is there no faster way?" Belldandy asked, fully aware that a job like that could take decades.

"Unfortunately, non," Peorth told her. "Our pace is now limited by the number of pages we, ourselves, can read."

They paused as someone cleared their throat nearby and turned.

"Excuse me," The Professor said. "I don't mean to pry, but perhaps I can be of some assistance?"

"Help, Professor sensei?" Belldandy asked.

"Yes, well, this is kind of my wheelhouse," the disembodied dragon's head told them. "I can search the database for you."

Peorth shook her head. "The information is not showing up in search functions..."

"The native search functions, yes," The Professor noted. "However, there is an incredible amount of space in my head. Enough to copy large swathes of the database and then perform my own searches. Interested?"

The French goddess turned to Belldandy and shrugged. "It's worth a try, I suppose." She turned to the robotic dragon head and picked him up with a grunt. "You are heavier than you look, Monsieur!"

"And you, my dear, have very soft hands," the Professor told her in reply.

Peorth deposited him on the desk next to the terminal and typed a few commands into the keyboard, establishing a wireless link between the two.

"There," she said.

"Anything?" Belldandy asked quickly.

"Er... you realize that this will still take some time," the Professor told her. "I would recommend in the meantime that you get some rest."

Belldandy's face drooped. "Hai. I suppose so."

Peorth gently touched her elbow and smiled, nodding toward the kitchen. "Come, Cheri, I'll make you some tea."

"Thank you, Peorth," Belldandy told her with a sigh. "You've done so much to help me. I owe you so much."

"Nonsense," Peorth replied. "You and Monsieur Keiichi have done much for me over the years. It is the least I can do." She smiled again. "Let's talk of happier things. What will you do once you and Keiichi are reunited? What is your plan?"

Belldandy smiled. "We have a house here, but I don't believe we'll spend much time there. I want to show Keiichi san all the splendors of Creation."

"Ah," Peorth sighed. "Retirement travel. Or..." She smirked at her friend. "Second honeymoon?"

"Among other things," Belldandy told her friend with a faint smile. "I admit, knowing that we would spend eternity with Keiichi san in a more youthful..."

"...virile..." Peorth broke in.

"_Youthful_," Belldandy reiterated, her smile growing now. "... state appealed to me. Mortality, Peorth, makes years precious, and you have to seize them. Otherwise... opportunities are simply lost."

Peorth said nothing, sensing that Belldandy was drifting into more painful territory.

"I never questioned The Almighty's plan before," Belldandy whispered. "Never. Not before..." She paused for a moment before turning to her friend. "Have you ever doubted?" she asked.

"Oui," Peorth told her immediately, without even a cautious pause.

"You sound almost proud of it," Belldandy told her.

"In a way I am," Peorth replied. "I saw friends... people I had known all my life... suddenly become something else. I saw them turn on coworkers and friends... even family... and start... it wasn't even a war, Belldandy," Peorth told her. She shook her head. "Not that Day. It was an attempt at extermination. Here. On Heaven's doorstep. I... No one... can see that and not doubt." She took a sip of her tea.

"I remember the day I finally doubted as well," Belldandy told her. "And I hate it. I feel so... selfish for it."

Peorth watched her friend for a moment, wondering if she would, or if she even could, continue.

"We told ourselves," Belldandy went on, "That we would keep trying until Keiichi's fortieth birthday. We thought that should be the point where we stop, when that moment would pass." She turned to Peorth seriously. "I never doubted, not for a moment, that it would happen. I knew the Almighty would grant our wish. There was no reason not to, no reason to inflict that kind of pain on us. The time just wasn't right, that was all. And then... his birthday came and went and... nothing."

"Belldandy," Peorth whispered.

The Norn shook her head. "So we pushed the deadline back... and again... and again until the point where no mortal woman would have even dared try... and nothing." She turned to Peorth with wet, mournful eyes. "What kind of fertility goddess can't have a child of her own? What other fertility goddess in all of our history has ever had to face her husband and say, 'I can't?'"

"I'm so sorry, Cheri," Peorth whispered.

"It just seemed so unnecessarily cruel," Belldandy said softly. "I asked Him why, and he said... 'because it's not in My plan.'" She wiped her eyes. "I tried to accept that... I couldn't."

"I'm sure Keiichi never blamed you," Peorth told her.

"Of course he didn't!" Belldandy replied, shocked that Peorth would even consider such a possibility. "But that never stopped me from blaming myself."

"Excuse me, Ladies," The Professor interrupted. "I am ready to begin my search."

The two goddesses shared a look.

"Okay," Peorth said. "Let's go get him."

888

Skuld stormed into the outer office of Terminal Dogma in a way not unlike her own sister had done 25 years before, ready to brook no argument. The Almighty's secretary saw her approach and smiled.

"Good afternoon, Commander," the blonde, Serena, told her. "What can I do for you?"

"I need to see Him," Skuld told her curtly. "Right now."

Serena turned uncomfortable. "The Almighty One isn't seeing anyone right now."

"Why not?" Skuld demanded.

"I'm sorry?" Serena asked honestly puzzled. "Are you asking me why the Almighty One has chosen to do something?"

"Billions... BILLIONS... of people are dying RIGHT NOW," Skuld hissed at her. "He needs to be a part of this conversation."

"He is not seeing anyone right now," Serena told her with a steely edge. "I can make you an appointment if you wish... perhaps two weeks from now?"

Before Skuld could totally lose it, she heard a voice behind her.

"Skuld! Oh, thank Heavens!"

The commander turned and found her mother standing at the entrance to Terminal Dogma. Frigga approached her quickly. "I'm so glad you're here. I was going to call you..." She took her daughter by the elbow and began to lead her away from Serena's desk. "You see... I have a problem... It's... I'm embarrassed to say it's one of those generational problems..."

"Mom," Skuld hissed as they left the office. "What is going on here?!"

"Well, it's my new laptop," Frigga went on as they walked down the winding staircase to where Heaven's de facto queen kept her own office. "I know it's such a stereotype, but I am having a problem with it, and I know your generation, particularly you, is much better at these things..."

"I mean the anomaly!" Skuld cried, roughly pulling away from her mother.

Frigga held up a finger, bidding her daughter to wait until they were inside her office with the door closed behind them. "All right, dear, please go on..."

"Entire realms are being swallowed up, and the most I can get from Michael is that it's no big deal!" Skuld cried. "And now, with Creation literally being annihilated, the Almighty One can't spare five minutes to talk to the head of the only organization trying to mitigate it!? What is going on, Mom?!"

Frigga forced a smile. "My dear... I wish I could answer all your questions, but unfortunately I can't."

"Can't or won't?" Skuld demanded.

"Can't," Frigga replied as patiently as she possibly could. "When the Almighty One tells you that you mustn't discuss something, even and particularly with your own daughter, you must obey... right?"

Skuld shook with rage but nodded. The Almighty One's command was law.

"Now then," Frigga went on, gesturing to her desk. "My laptop. It's not running as well as I expected, and it needs to. You see, it's connected to the same ultra-violet level network that your Father and Michael's is." She paused for a moment. "So... I need _you_ to take a look at it and make it work right. Do you understand?"

The Norn looked into her mother's eyes and nodded. "Yeah," she said in dawning understanding. "I can do that. No problem."

"Splendid!" Frigga said. "Now, I am going to leave you alone here with it and go make some tea. I'm already logged into the network, so I just need you to do what needs to be done. I'll be back in ten minutes." She started for the door.

"Mom," Skuld stopped her. Frigga turned back to her. "Are you sure you want me to... fix your computer?"

"Yes," Frigga told her quietly. "You're my daughter." With that, she turned and left the office, leaving Skuld alone with her answers.

888

"It's a _huge_ gamble," Metheus noted from his seat at the table. The table in the main conference room could seat 60, but only three people occupied the room now, three people who were about to decide whether or not to destroy Creation.

"I never bet more than I'm willing to lose," Loki told him, holding a finger up.

"You're betting the totality of Her Majesty's empire," Metheus pointed out.

Sitting at the head of the table, Hild arched an eyebrow in Loki's direction.

Loki shrugged. "Which I am prepared to lose." Seeing they weren't convinced, Loki went on. "Look, you are looking at this in terms of what you _could_ lose and what you _could_ gain... You have to stop that. We, the three of us, all know that 'Her Majesty's empire" has an expiration date. You must now look at this situation in terms of what you _will_ lose and what you _could_ gain. And really, all of a sudden we care about the empire?" he asked. "I was made to understand, _Your Majesty_, that the empire was a means to a specific end."

"That is so," Metheus argued on his mistress's behalf. "Every demon serves and the resources of Her Majesty's empire exist to find the Princess. Which is why gambling it away could very well make that task more difficult than it already is..."

"That task is already over," Loki told them both. "We all know that, though for different reasons." He pointed at Metheus. "You know that because you've searched under every rock in Creation and have found nothing. What? Is she dead?"

"No," Hild broke in for the first time. "I would know if she were dead. I would have felt it."

"BINGO!" Loki replied. "So she's not dead! She's not in Creation! That leaves what? A place outside of Creation. A place that we know _must_ exist because of the anomaly."

He turned to Hild. "You see, Hild, I _know_ your daughter is alive... because if she were dead, this anomaly couldn't be. Only three goddesses could possibly be at the center of this... two of them are accounted for. The third is not. Therefore simple logic tells us it must be the third."

"Let's say you're right," Metheus told him. "Why the big charade?"

"Because everyone has a role to play, everyone has their part," Loki said. He looked to Hild again. "You can't deny that you were prepared to play yours before I arrived. To give in and accept it. What I am proposing is the greatest cheat in history. You see, everyone is ready to meet their deaths when there's no other option, everyone is ready to play their role even if that role is horrible. But when you introduce a sliver of hope, a chance to escape, all of a sudden that role is stupid."

"Even if what you say is true," Metheus began, "There's no escape."

"There _is_ an escape!" Loki retorted. "We Favrashi have known this day was coming for 25 years, and have sought an escape. But... we need help. And there is only one person in all of Creation who can help us complete it. Just one, only one will do."

"Then why approach us?" Metheus demanded. "Why not go to this person?"

"Because this person won't help if she knew why we needed her help," Loki said. "But, again, you offer a sliver of hope... and anything becomes possible."

888

"All right, Monsieur," Peorth began, taking her seat at the terminal again. "What do you have for me?"

"You would not believe how much data there is in this network that simply doesn't show up in a search," the Professor told them. "All in plain sight, and yet all hidden."

"So where is Monsieur Keiichi?" Peorth asked.

"That is not among the data," the dragon's head told them. "Indeed, his record is rather difficult to locate."

"His record showed up in a normal search," Belldandy pointed out.

"The public-facing record, yes," the Professor told her. "The secured file was locked away in a separate folder marked 'NOAH.'"

"Does that stand for something?" Belldandy asked Peorth.

"I don't know," Peorth replied. "I've never heard the term used before."

"So does his secure record pick up where the public-facing record left off?" Belldandy asked.

"No, like this public-facing record, the secure record stops at his demise, but that is not they eye-catching element of this."

"Then what is?" Peorth asked.

"His isn't the only one."

"This has happened to someone else?!" Belldandy cried.

"So it would seem," the Professor told her.

"Well, show us the record!" Peorth demanded.

"Yes, well, it's not quite as easy as..."

"Show us the record," Peorth demanded again, unwilling to put up with more delays.

"Of course," the Professor told her concedingly.

A spreadsheet appeared on the screen and started to populate. The two goddesses watched in silent awe as the scrollbar on the side of the screen got smaller and smaller and smaller.

"There you go!" the dragon told them. "The records of everyone who died and didn't reappear in Heaven."

Belldandy and Peorth stared in complete shock as the Professor continued.

"All thirty-five thousand, two hundred and twenty-six of them."

888

Skuld sat at her desk, staring down at the holographic planner that displayed all her appointments for the next year and a half.

_It's like a bad dream,_ she thought. She would almost have preferred to not know, to fight this thing from ignorance. At least then, she could believe there was a chance to win.

She hadn't been able to face her mother when she had returned to her office ten minutes later. She didn't know what to say. She wanted to ask her how long she had known, why she hadn't told anyone, why _the Almighty_ hadn't told anyone. But it was futile, and she knew it.

It was all futile.

_What do I do now?_ she asked herself. _Fight? How? It's over. All of it. _

She heard a knock at the door and looked up to find Shara standing there. "The refugees are all tucked in," she said as she entered, taking her usual seat across from Skuld. She saw the look on Skuld's face and made a guess as to the cause. "I heard about the _Valentine_," she said. "I'm sorry."

"They died saving others," Skuld told her quietly, knowing it was a lie. In the eyes of the Almighty, the deaths of the _Valentine's_ crew was a futile gesture. It meant nothing now.

"I'll help you with the letters," Shara offered.

Skuld almost choked. Condolence letters? There wasn't enough paper in Creation...

"What is it?" Shara asked, seeing that there was more on her friend's mind than the _Valentine's_ destruction.

"Shara," Skuld began, "Did I do the right thing?" She looked up at her friend. "During the war... did I make the right call?"

"I wouldn't be here if I thought otherwise," Shara told her honestly. "You did what you had to do... what you _always_ do... You turned the impossible into a fighting chance. No one could have asked more of you than that."

"Shara," Skuld began again. "This anomaly... it's..."

"Commander, TOC."

The commander paused at the sound of the hail. Reaching out, she hit the speaker button on her phone. "Yes? What is it?"

"Ma'am, this is Major Horus," the sound of the D2 watch officer came back. "Ma'am, we just intercepted a transmission from the Demonic capitol aimed toward several realms in the second spiral arm. It was transmitted uncoded."

Skuld blinked. Uncoded? That was unusual.

"And the contents?" Skuld asked.

"Yes, Ma'am. Message begins: 'To Her Majesty's Task Force 42... Begin attack operations plus three.'"

Shara gave her friend a shocked look.

Skuld stared at the phone expressionless.

"I'll be right there," she said.

888

He hugged the blanket closer to himself and tried to scoot a little closer to the fire. Wherever he was, it seemed to be winter or coming close to it. He watched as Belldandy stirred the small pot of gruel that rested in the campfire and wondered what he would do next. The redhead had been nothing but understanding of his predicament, almost too much so. He didn't know where he was from, but he was almost certain that naked men falling out of the sky wasn't the norm.

As if sensing this line of thought, she lifted her green eyes to him and took a breath. "It is time for us to have an uncomfortable conversation," she said.

"Okay," he replied. "Shoot."

"This place," she began, gesturing around her, "This entire world... is not your home. Wherever you are from, you will find it on no map here. Likewise, whatever you were before, you are not that now."

"What do you mean?" he asked. He could kind of grasp the first thought, but the second was much more perplexing. If he wasn't himself than what was he?

"Let me show you," Belldandy said. She rounded the fire and knelt next to him. "Cold?"

"Well, I'm naked and sitting in the mountains," he replied. "So, yeah, a bit."

She reached out and touched his chest. "I want you to think of clothes," she told him. "Think of something warm... the colors... the feel... Think hard... and let it become your sole thought."

He closed his eyes and took a breath, thinking of something warm, a jacket and a pair of pants for god's sake. He felt a new weight on his body, and opened his eyes. Looking down, under the blanket, he found himself clad in a black shirt and pants. A jacket hung over his shoulders, leather, familiar.

"How did you do that?" he breathed.

"I didn't," she told him, moving back to her place across the fire. "You did. I merely guided you. This is what I mean. You are now more than what you were. You are like me, a god."

She watched for a reaction and saw something she didn't expect to. "You do not seem as... shocked... by that news as I believed you would be."

"I don't know," he said. "I'm surprised and yet... it seems... I don't know... familiar."

Belldandy pursed her lips and nodded.

"You don't seem all that shocked to be having this conversation," he pointed out.

"It has happened many times over the years," she told him, resuming her chore of stirring the pot. My sisters and I came across the first of you a few centuries ago. Every so often it happens, more so lately than in the past."

"Do they have amnesia too?" he asked.

"Some," she answered. "Some get their memories back. Others not so much. My sister's husband recovered his memories several years after his arrival. He described a strange, mysterious world filled with wonder he called... Cleveland."

"Huh," he replied thoughtfully. "Do you think I'm from Cleveland too?"

"I do not believe so," she said. "His appearance and mannerisms are different than yours."

"What world are you from?" he asked.

She smiled. "My sisters and I were born here. For many years we and our parents were the only gods in the world... and then a man fell from the sky. And then another. Not even Mother and Father knew what to make of it."

He paused for a moment in deep thought. "How do I get back?" he asked.

The goddess looked up at him and shook her head. "You don't. No one has ever gone back. You are here now. That simply is."

He digested this for several minutes, and Belldandy let him. He imagined that if he ever got his memories back, that statement would have much more impact, but as things stood now, one world was as good as another. Even so... there was something inside him that yearned to go back... not to a where, perhaps to a whom.

He pushed the thought aside. "What should I do now?"

She shrugged. "Whatever you like," she told him. "You can go where you wish and do what you wish... within reason. Should you set about harming others, my sister will come to stop you."

"The sister with the husband from Cleveland?" he asked.

"No, another sister," she clarified. "Unfortunately, with so many new arrivals, there has been some... conflict. My sister has assumed the responsibility of enforcing the peace. Our father taught her, gave her the tools to do this, and Mother gave her her blessing."

"Your mom and dad sound like important people around here," he noted.

"Of course," Belldandy told him. "She is the Almother, and Father stands beside her, supporting her. All this, this place, everything around you... exists because of her. She is the world."

"So... _really_ important," he concluded.

"Yes."

He thought on this for a moment, that urge in the back of his mind returning. "Could she return me to my home?" he asked.

Belldandy blinked, taken aback by the question. "I... I do not know. No one has ever asked before."

"Wait," he said. "Are you saying people drop naked out of the sky here... and no one asks to go home?"

"No," she told him. "There is a period of adjustment, but they all accept that they are here."

He looked into her eyes. "Will you take me to your mother... so I can ask her?"

Belldandy bit her lip in thought but nodded. "I will take you to her."


	4. Country, Crown and Throne

AMG belongs to Kosuke Fujishima.

Thanks to WillZ for prereading for me. I keep telling him I'm giving up, but he's always there for me anyway.

**Blessings: Shattered Sky**

**Chapter 4**

**Country, Crown and Throne**

* * *

_Dear Lenus,_

_I don't know what to say except that I am so sorry. I can't even look my friends or my sister in the eye right now. How do you tell the people you care about that you're responsible for the deaths of 150 trillion people?_

_I love you. I'm so sorry._

_Skuld_

* * *

"I need to see all of it," Skuld announced as she arrived at the TOC. "Do we know what ships are classified as 'Task Force 42?' I want a location on them, all of them. Now."

She pushed everything else aside. This was her job, her sole reason for being. She could do nothing about the rest of it, but she could do this.

Horus appeared on her left and started manipulating the panel that controlled the viewing cube, showing a representative map of Creation.

"Task Force 42 is a medium-sized strike force consisting of 33 ships," Horus told her. "The largest of which is a battle wagon called the _Lady Midday_. The rest are black galleons and an assortment of support vessels. The task force is currently here... Realm Three-Oh-Six."

At that pronouncement, Shara's eyes narrowed. "Wait a sec... That doesn't make any sense."

"Agreed," Horus told her. "If they intend to attack in three days, they've chosen a very poor staging area."

"It'll take them a week just to get within striking distance of anything worth shooting at," Shara added. "I don't get it."

Skuld put her fist to her lips and tried to figure it out herself. Perhaps the message was a feint, and the message was meant for another task force, but it appeared that TF42 was the only sizeable force operating. Then there was the matter of them broadcasting the orders in the clear. They had to know that she would see it.

At least one demon did...

"Major," she began, adjusting the map to show an area that lay on the far side of the Demon Realm relative to Heaven's location. "What ships do we have in Realm... One-Oh-Five?"

"The _Aprax_ is working with one of the emerging civilizations there," Horus told her.

"I want you to send a message to the _Aprax_," Skuld told him. "In the clear."

Horus blinked at the order, and Shara gave her an arched eyebrow. "Ma'am?"

"In the clear," she repeated. "Message begins: Continue with current operation. Meeting at Point Valhalla will proceed as before."

"And that means..." Horus prompted.

"That you better start transmitting," Skuld told him. "I'll be in my office," she said.

Shara followed her and waited for the door to close behind her before beginning. "Ballsy move," she said. "You really think Metheus is going to tell you their battle plan for us?"

Skuld sat at her desk. "I'm not convinced we're the ones they're after. I think they wanted us to see their message. I don't know why yet, but I'm willing to play their game."

"How long do you have to get to Point Valhalla?" Shara asked.

"Gonna have to leave here in the next hour," Skuld told her. "I hope Metheus remembers the old codes, or else I'm going to be sitting there awhile."

"This cloak and dagger shit was always the worst part of the job," Shara told her. "I was hoping we'd left this crap behind with the old unit."

"All that's old is new again," Skuld said. "Do me a favor, look in on Belldandy for me. I don't know how long this will take."

"Yeah, no problem." She paused, again getting an odd vibe from her old friend. "Is that all?"

Skuld looked up at her and forced a smile. "Yeah... for now."

888

"This can't be," Belldandy gasped, shaking her head. "How can thirty-five _thousand_ people just... disappear?"

"Someone must know about this," Peorth remarked. "Someone..."

"The file is classified above Ultra-Violet," the Professor offered helpfully. "That means that not even your sister has access to it."

Peorth swallowed nervously. "Belldandy... we've stumbled onto something no one was meant to see."

"Keiichi san is in there," Belldandy replied quietly.

"Unfortunately, it doesn't say where 'there' is," the Professor told them.

"We need more information," Belldandy said. "We need to find common threads, links between these people. Professor Sensei, can you search for such threads?"

"Hold that thought," Peorth told him. "Belldandy, whatever this is, we're not ready for it. If this is as classified as it looks, there may be other security measures attached to it. For all we know, the Grigori are on their way here right now."

"Keiichi san is in there," Belldandy repeated. There was no other argument to offer, and in her mind no other argument was necessary.

Peorth sighed. "Oui, Monsieur Keiichi is in there," she agreed. "Okay, Professor, see what you can find."

"Already halfway done," the Professor told them.

888

The mouth of the cave opened up to a view of an ever darkening sky and a tall, rocky peak. Point Valhalla had been the site of a battle between gods and demons millenia ago, during the First War Against God. The world on which the battle took place had been scorched clean, leaving only black sand, rock and filthy water. Clouds covered the area miles thick. It made a perfect place for a clandestine meeting, which is how Skuld had used it over the last decade.

She watched the lightning illuminate Point Valhalla and took a breath. Here, waiting, with nothing else to occupy her mind, she could focus for a moment on what she learned in her mother's office.

They had to be wrong. That was the only explanation.

_The Almighty is wrong?_ she asked herself. _Does that question even compute?_

Before she could consider the problem more fully, she heard the faint sound of a shoe scraping against stone and turned, her hand going to her sidearm. She slowly dropped it a moment later as a familiar figure emerged from the cave's shadows.

"Commander," the demon greeted her. "Feeling nostalgic?"

"Metheus," she returned the greeting. She nodded to his collar. "I had heard Hild made you a general. Congratulations."

"Her Majesty rewards loyalty," Metheus told her. "'Always repay your debts, and never go back on a deal.' It's her unofficial motto. Hence why I'm here. What can I do for you?"

"Task Force 42," Skuld said by way of answer.

Metheus smiled. "Ah, yes... that..."

"I figured there was a reason you broadcast that attack order in the clear," Skuld told him.

"Indeed," the demon told her. "Her Majesty didn't want you to be left without warning... at the same time, you know how theatrical she can be." He smiled. "I trust half your staff shit their pants at the order."

"Close to it," Skuld admitted. "Except that your task force isn't anywhere near anything worth hitting. You're lucky we didn't order a preemptive strike. You could have started a war."

"War," Metheus replied, his hands outstretched. "What is it good for?"

"So what are you hitting?" Skuld asked.

"Not you," Metheus told her. "Your people can relax. This is personal business for Her Majesty."

"_Personal_ business?" Skuld asked.

"Is there any other kind when it comes to Her Majesty?" Metheus asked. "You understand, of course, that we cannot divulge too many details, however, Her Majesty has authorized me to inform you that should you feel the need to plus up your garrisons in the second spiral arm, she is amenable to that."

"Kind of her," Skuld said deadpan.

"It's important that this operation not become something it's not meant to be," Metheus told her. "It is merely a local operation."

"I see," Skuld said. "Of course, I must do what I must for the sake of appearances... Plus up the garrisons... Perhaps send observers..."

"I wouldn't recommend it," Metheus said. "We wouldn't want a repeat of the Roundtable, now, would we?"

"Of course not," Skuld agreed icily.

"Well," Metheus said with a clap of his hands. "If your mind is suitably at ease, I'll be on my way. Let's do this again sometime, Commander. I do miss our chats. Give my best to Colonel Shara and that young man of yours."

Skuld's hand dropped to her sidearm, and her eyes bored into Metheus's.

"I think you should go," she said quietly. "Before I take your head the way I took Hild's."

Metheus smirked. "Now, now... We're all friends here, after all." He gave her a short bow. "I go in peace."

Skuld's hand didn't leave the butt of her sidearm until Metheus had left the realm entirely. It took her several minutes before the knots in her muscles, the fury, to uncoil again. She turned and started for the hardline that led back to Heaven.

She had a lot of work to do.

888

"Now this _is_ interesting," the Professor spoke up after several minutes of silence.

"You found something?" Belldandy asked.

"Cross referencing the NOAH list with other databases was a good idea," the Professor told her. "Guess what list more than 70 percent of these people show up on?"

She looked at the monitor, and the answer hit Belldandy like a bale of hay. "Heaven's Grace," she whispered. "They've been granted wishes."

"Wishers?" Peorth asked in shock. "Why?! Why make wishers disappear _after_ they die?"

"Not sure," the Professor admitted. "But when you cross reference these lists, NOAH begins to look like a who's who of the best and brightest of the mortal plane over the last 25 years."

Peorth's brow furrowed in thought. "Only the last 25?" she asked. "Nothing before then?"

If the dragon could have shook his head, he would have. "Twenty-five years in Heaven, 60 for Earth, 45 for Argadnel, and on and on. Odd, isn't it? What would prompt such a program 25 years ago?"

"The Day," Peorth whispered. "Twenty-five years ago... The Day."

As if designed to scare them all at that exact moment, a hard knock came at the door, causing the two goddesses to jump.

Peorth looked at Belldandy in honest fear. "The Grigori?" she asked.

The knock came again.

"Who is it?" Belldandy called.

"SHHHHH!" Peorth shushed her angrily. "Don't let them know we're in here!" she hissed.

"Peorth san," Belldandy began, "I find it doubtful that the Grigori would bother knocking on the door if they didn't already know we were here."

"It's Shara," the reply came back. "Your sister sent me to check up on you."

"How do we know it's really her?" Peorth asked.

"GIVE US A MINUTE TO HIDE ALL OUR DRUGS!" the Professor called out.

"Almighty Best and Greatest, why did you let that detestable thing out of its drawer?" Shara called through the door.

"It's her," the Professor announced.

Belldandy went to the door and opened it while Peorth turned off the terminal's monitor, the holographic screen going blank just as Shara sauntered in.

"Hey," she said, taking a mental note of Peorth's presence. "I don't know if you remember me, we met years ago..."

"Of course, Colonel Shara," Belldandy said. "Even if I didn't, Skuld speaks of you often in her letters."

"I'm Peorth," the other goddess threw in. "A friend of the family's."

"I'm called 'the Pr..."

"I know who you are, puss-cake," Shara told the robot. She turned back to Belldandy. "Skuld asked me to drop by and check on you. She'd be here herself, but... you would not believe the day we're having."

"We're having quite the day ourselves," Peorth told her.

"Is Skuld all right?" Belldandy asked in concern.

Shara paused. "I don't know," she admitted. "She went to Terminal Dogma to talk to The Man, and when she came back she was... I don't know... I've only seen her like that once before... and it wasn't anything good."

"I should go talk to her," Belldandy declared.

"She's off-realm right now," the Valkyrie told her. "But I'll give you a ring when she comes back. Don't be surprised if she's too busy to talk, though. I mean seriously... what a day..." She brightened a moment later. "Is there anything you need, anything I can do to help you find your guy?"

"I don't think so..." Peorth began just as Belldandy took another leap of faith.

"Colonel, do you know the term 'NOAH?'"

Shara blinked. "Not beyond the Biblical reference," she said.

"Biblical reference?" Peorth asked.

"Yeah, it's a character in an Earth fable, one of those stories they tell to help explain the Almighty," Shara told them. "Just before a flood was to sweep across the Earth, the Almighty One directed a mortal named Noah to gather together a mating pair of every animal of the world and put them aboard a giant ship. This way, once the waters receded, the world could populate itself again." She turned to Belldandy. "I thought you were from Earth. You never heard this story?"

"I think it was a movie with Morgan Freeman," Belldandy told her. "But it was quite awful."

"Deep Impact!" the Professor suddenly cried.

"Evan Almighty," Belldandy corrected.

"DAMN! I was going to say 'Evan Almighty!'" the dragon pouted.

"So, to get back on point," Peorth sighed, "You're saying that this Noah person had to choose which creatures lived and died?"

"Something like that," Shara said. "Why do you ask?"

Before Peorth could make up a suitable excuse, Shara's phone rang.

"Just a sec." She brought the cell to her ear. "Shara... Understood." She closed the phone again. "Gotta go. Your sister's back, and whatever she's got, it's hot. I'll let her know you want to talk to her."

"Thank you, Colonel," Belldandy told her.

"And don't worry," Shara told her, putting a hand on her shoulder. "He'll turn up. Where can he go, right?"

Bellandy smiled and thanked her, showing Shara to the door. Peorth turned back to the screen and watched it come to life again.

"Are you all right, Miss Peorth?" the Professor asked her.

"Just thinking," Peorth told him. "Wondering if there's such a thing as coincidences."

888

"Wow, so he's willing to let us plus up our defenses?" Shara asked in mock surprise. "How generous of him!"

Sitting at her desk, Skuld looked through the charts, her mind on her work.

"Fucking Metheus," Shara grumbled.

"He asked me to say hello, by the way," Skuld told her.

"I hope you told him he could kiss my ass," the Valkyrie replied.

"Not in so many words," Skuld admitted. "What's the latest on Task Force 42?" she asked.

"D2 came out with some new info," Shara told her, bringing the file up on Skuld's monitor. "They can hit seven realms, not a one of them worth a damn."

"To us..." Skuld pointed out.

"To anyone," Shara argued. "There's nothing in them, primitive worlds off the beaten trail." Shara took a breath and tried to come up with something that made sense. "Maybe she's going after leftover Alpha-Hild partisans?"

Skuld shook her head. "Doesn't work that way," she said. "Once Alpha-Hild died, the demons that sided with her fell into line with the other. There's no one left to carry her torch."

"Okay," Shara sighed. "So she's not after us, and she's not after Alpha loyalists, then what?"

"She's going after Urd," Skuld told her.

"What makes you say that?"

"It's the only thing she ever does," Skuld told her quietly. "The only thing that drives her. She wouldn't send out a task force unless somehow it got her closer to Urd." Her mind went back to her conversation with Metheus, looking for the code words, the hidden clues that would lead to something more concrete.

_"We wouldn't want a repeat of the Roundtable, now, would we?"_

It was a longshot, but a theory formed in Skuld's mind. She took a piece of paper and jotted down the seven realms in striking distance of the Demonic ships and stood up.

"I'm hungry," she announced. "You hungry?"

Shara arched an eyebrow at her boss. "I could eat."

"Come on," Skuld said, heading for the door.

888

Shara stepped out of the carriage that had carried them from Division headquarters and turned to her friend in surprise. "You want to eat here?"

Skuld nodded as she started toward the front steps, Shara keeping pace with her. "Yup."

"Grigori headquarters?" Shara asked, still not getting it. "We could have eaten back at the office if we wanted cafeteria food. So... why..."

"Simple," Skuld said, holding the door open for her. "I want to talk to a spy."

Shara followed the Division commander through the entrance and down the hall to the elevator, still bewildered as Skuld hit the down button. If she wanted to speak to a Grigori agent, their offices were on the upper floors. Shara had learned long ago, however, that sometimes you had to take Skuld on faith.

She eyed her friend almost warily. Skuld had been like this since the day they met, the first day of Valkyrie training. No one had known what to make of the petite girl who looked out-of-place in her own armor, the last student of Commander Gwydion and the goddess ,some said, that condemned him to death. The only goddess to receive a combat citation _before_ she had actually begun training.

She had had a lot to live up to.

The elevator opened, and they stepped out into the cafeteria, a plush overly-formal place that, in Shara's opinion, tried to be something more than it was.

A goddess with pale blue hair and an impeccable black and white server's uniform appeared in front of them almost out of thin air. She flashed a bright smile and clapped her hands together.

"Ah! Commander Skuld! It's so good to see you again!"

Skuld returned her smile. "How are you, Miri?"

"Oh, you know me! I'd complain, but who would listen, right? Business with the boys upstairs today?"

"Was in the building and wanted to get something to eat before heading back," Skuld explained. "Today's special is..." she closed her eyes as if trying to remember. "Shrimp?"

"Of course you only come on the days when we serve Earth food," Miri giggled. "Come on, I'll show you to your table. Specials for both of you?"

"That would be great, Miri, thank you," Skuld told her as she took a seat.

"Just a sec!" With that, the goddess disappeared again.

"You eat here a lot?" Shara asked.

"I find it beneficial," Skuld told her.

Before Shara could reply, Miri reappeared with a couple of plates balanced on the tips of her fingers. "Here you go!" she announced. "I think you're really going to like this."

"Thank you, Miri," Skuld said.

"Now, is there anything else I can get you? Ice cream, perhaps"

"Actually, if you don't mind, I kind of have a problem," Skuld told her, reaching into her pocket. "You see, my sister is visiting, and she gave me a list of things to pick up on the way home." She offered the waitress a self-deprecating smile. "For the life of me, I can't read her handwriting. Could you take a look and see if you can figure out what she wants?"

"Well, I can certainly try," Miri replied with a smile, taking the list from Skuld's hand. She opened it and looked at it... her smile dropping as if someone had slapped it off her face.

"Thank you, that's all I needed," Skuld said, snatching the list back and rising to her feet. "Come on, Colonel."

Miri recovered quickly. "Wait! Commander! Your food!"

"Something just came up," Skuld called over her shoulder as they entered the elevator. She watched Miri's panicked face as the doors closed and the elevator started up.

"So," Shara began. "What was that?"

"They're Favrashi bases," Skuld told her quietly, holding up the list she had jotted down in her office.

"And you got that from that conversation how?"

Skuld turned to her. "Because the last thing a Favrashi spy wants to see is a list of their bases in the hands of the 1st Combat Division commander," she said.

"The waitress?!" Shara hissed.

The Norn nodded.

The elevator came to a halt and the doors opened. Skuld led her friend back to their carriage and stepped inside.

"Destination please," the computer's gentle voice prompted.

"Hold here," Skuld said. She held up the list. "That's who Hild is after. She's hitting the Angels."

"But why?" Shara asked. "Since when has she cared about the Favrashi?"

"I don't know, but whatever it is, it has to do with Urd, with the Roundtable," Skuld said. "That smirking bastard kept dropping hints about it. Hild doesn't do _anything_ unless it brings her closer to Urd. Which means that for some reason she thinks there's a connection between the Favrashi and finding Urd."

"What connection?" Shara asked. "How?"

"I don't know yet," Skuld said. "But you can never, _never_, underestimate the Favrashi. Ever."

"So what are we waiting for?" Shara asked.

Someone knocked on the carriage door, and Skuld opened it. A panting Miri stood there, a pair of bento boxes in her arms. "Commander," she said smiling. "I packed up your food to go."

"Get in," Skuld ordered coldly.

The goddess entered the carriage and smiled at them. Neither smiled back.

Miri stopped smiling. "How long have you known?"

"Long enough to make sure your time here was a complete waste," Skuld told her. "Before you ask, yes, the Grigori know who and what you are."

Miri swallowed. "So much for that, I guess." She looked at Skuld nervously. "What will you do?"

"You mean with this?" Skuld asked, holding the list up. "The decision has already been made. The bases are to be attacked and destroyed."

The angel went ashen. "Commander, please," she whispered. "It's not what you think! The Favrashi in those realms are just trying to live their lives out of Heaven's way!"

"I wish I could believe you," Skuld told her. "But you can imagine how difficult it was locating these bases, and now that I know about them I can't tolerate their existence."

"Those people are innocent," Miri told her.

"There are no innocent angels, Miri, you know that!" Skuld barked. "Not after The Day! Not after The Roundtable!"

"We thought the same of you," the waitress spy told her. "This is how you would find justice? Burning the homes and farms of people who've already been beaten?"

"I'd call it a good start," Shara offered.

Skuld bit her lip. Miri saw her waver and pressed forward. "Not all Favrashi supported the attack on Heaven," she said. "But now they are forced to hide. They don't deserve death."

"Then perhaps we can make a deal," Skuld said.

"A deal?" Miri squeaked.

"You say the sites on this list are just simple farming communities," Skuld went on. "Give me something better. Give me something of value."

"And you'll call off the attack?" Miri pressed.

"No," Skuld told her. "Calling off an attack on the Favrashi? They'd call me mad." Skuld smiled and leaned in as if sharing a secret with her. "But... I can delay it. Long enough for you to get word to them and evacuate the people there. Say... three days?"

Miri thought on this. "It would seem, Commander, there is little choice."

Skuld said nothing, waiting for Miri to cut to the end. The waitress nodded. "There is a place you may find of interest in Realm Three-Oh-Three. The most virulent of our movement was based there. Han Ba, Clio... Loki... They had some kind of R and D set-up there."

"I thought that was what the Roundtable was for," Skuld told her.

"The Roundtable base was in charge of the execution phase," Miri told her. "But Three-Oh-Three is where they did most of the actual work." She turned uncomfortable a moment later. "There was also... something else..." She paused.

"Go on," Skuld prompted.

"There was a... camp... there," Miri told her.

"Define 'camp,'" Shara told her.

"Not every god and goddess who disappeared during the run-up to the battle in Heaven was a Favrashi," Miri told them. "Some of them were gods who knew things or had access to things we needed..."

"A _prison camp_?" Skuld growled.

Miri lowered her eyes and nodded.

"What happened to the prisoners?" Skuld asked. "Where are they now?"

"Some of them were turned," Miri said. "And the rest..." She left the statement unfinished.

Shara stared at her in utter hatred. She shook her head. "Almighty... You're done. You're _fragged_, bitch..."

"Do what you must with me," Miri said. "But let the others live. They've done nothing to you."

"Sounds to me like they enslaved people for two and a half _decades_!" Shara retorted.

"That was Loki's group!" Miri replied. "And you, Commander, did a rather nice job of wiping them out when you destroyed the Roundtable. All that's left are people who want to be left alone."

Shara was about to get into it again, but Skuld raised her hand and bid her to be silent.

"What's there now?" she asked. "Who works there?"

"No one," Miri told her. "It's abandoned."

"And I'm supposed to accept that this abandoned camp is worth not wiping out what's left of your people?" she asked.

"There may be some leftover records or tech," Miri told her. "It's not like the stuff they worked with was very portable."

Skuld thought on this. The Roundtable base had a Class Three server. The angels' main R and D base could have had something more substantial... perhaps substantial enough to draw Hild's attention.

She handed Miri the list and a pen. "Give me the location, then get out of here. I'll give you three hours, and then I'm going to inform the Grigori that you've rabbited. And I don't ever want to see your face in Heaven again. Do you understand?"

888

Miri, or more appropriately, Under the Blade, entered her small house near Grigori headquarters and began stuffing her belongings into a bag. As she did this, she tapped the mirror on her nightstand three times, packing as she waited for the connection to go through. After a few moments, another god's face appeared in the silver glass.

"Well?" Loki asked.

Miri smiled. "It's done."

888

Neither of them spoke as the carriage carrying them arrived at Division headquarters. The news that Hild was going to attack the Favrashi coupled with the revelation that the angels had been keeping prisoners was a lot to take in. The carriage stopped, and before Shara could exit, Skuld held her hand out, blocking the way.

"What's on your mind, Boss?" Shara asked her quietly.

"I'm going to go home for a few hours," Skuld told her. "I'm not quite sure what to do with this information yet. Until I am, keep things quiet, keep everyone concentrated on the evacuation operation." She paused for a moment. "But get together a few Valks from the old team, have them ready to go on a moment's notice. Voltras, the twins, and someone who can fly a Seraphim."

"You're thinking of just letting this one go?" Shara asked, puzzled by the change.

"Let's just say I'm not sure there's a point yet," Skuld replied. "I'll decide in the morning. Get the ball rolling on that and then get some rest."

Shara nodded and hopped out of the carriage. Skuld watched her go and let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding. At some point, she was going to have to tell her friend the rest of it. But there was someone else to whom she owed an explanation to first.

She ordered the carriage to take her home and sat back, looking up at the sky through the transparent roof. It was cloudy and beginning to rain. By the time the carriage had pulled up to her building, it was a regular deluge.

_How appropriate_, she thought.

In the three seconds it took her to get from the carriage to the door, she was practically drenched. All she wanted as she approached her door was some sleep, something hot to drink and to _not_ have to talk to her sister. A part of her hoped Belldandy was already asleep, but instead she opened the door to find her sister, Peorth and the Professor working at her monitor.

"Hey," she said.

Every head in the room that was able to turn, turned to her. "Skuld!" Belldandy cried. "We were worried!"

"Yeah, I know," Skuld replied. "I'm sorry." She took a breath. "Any luck?"

"Actually, yes," the Professor told her. "Tell me, Skuld, can you identify what this thing is?" The monitor flashed and showed what looked like Valkyrie gun camera footage of the anomaly.

_It has a name_, she chided herself.

"Why do you ask?" Skuld responded out loud.

"We've discovered a few things," Belldandy told her. "Keiichi san is not the only mortal soul who's missing. There are thousands of others whose records simply end the way Keiichi's did."

Now _that_ was news to Skuld.

"Professor sensei has found some very old footage of this... thing... in the old archives, but it's not marked," Belldandy continued. "We think there's a connection."

Skuld blinked. "Archive footage?" she asked. "How old?"

"Big... big... BIG numbers," the Professor said. "We're talking eight or nine figures. Hard to get a true date on it, though."

The Valkyrie pointed at the screen. "You're telling me that this video was taken billions of years ago?"

"Are you telling us that it wasn't?" Peorth asked in puzzlement.

Skuld reached over her shoulder and entered a password that would get her into the Division battlenet. Tapping a few keys, she pointed as a second video popped up next to the one they had shown her.

"That video was taken by the Great Ship _Meriadoc_..." she told them. "... today."

"What is it?" Belldandy asked.

A hoarse, but familiar, voice called from behind them. "It's called 'The Flood.'"

They turned, and Peorth immediately dropped to her knees. Belldandy and Skuld continued to stand, allowed a touch more informality with the pair of newcomers given that the two were the Norns' parents.

Belldandy's breath caught in her throat at the sight of the Almighty, leaning against his cane. He looked weak and haggard as if he was a mortal who had aged thirty years since she last saw him. She looked to Skuld and found that she wasn't the only one surprised by his appearance. Frigga stood next to him, holding his arm as if she wasn't sure when he might need her to hold him up.

"Girls," she greeted.

"Father," Belldandy whispered.

The Almighty found Skuld with his good eye and addressed her first. "Your mother believes I owe you an explanation," he said tiredly.

"I learned a little on my own," Skuld informed him.

The Almighty waved His hand, dismissing the statement. "Your mother has already told me about her sleight of hand to get around my commands to her," he said. "And I no longer have the strength to give her the fight I'd normally offer over it, so here I am." He saw that Peorth was still kneeling and sighed. "Oh, will you get up?"

Peorth hopped to her feet. "Can we offer you anything, My Lord?" she asked.

"Well, for one thing, you can stop fiddling around in the Ultra-Violet network," He told her. "You are aware that as soon as you made copies of those files, I got an email alert, right?"

"Father," Belldandy began. "Where is Keiichi? Is he okay?"

"Belldandy," He croaked, "I don't know where Keiichi is, and I don't know if he's okay."

"How can you _not_ know?" Belldandy asked urgently. "You're the Almighty... you're the Creator of All Things... You're..."

"...dying," Skuld whispered. They all looked at her in utter shock, except for Frigga, who lowered her head sadly, and the Almighty Himself, who pierced her with his eye and nodded.

"I don't understand," Belldandy breathed. "How is that even possible?"

"It's difficult to explain," Frigga told her. "Creation, in a way, is a living thing. It eats, it grows... and it dies... It has a cycle all its own, and we are approaching the end of that cycle."

"You're saying that Creation is _dying_?" Peorth asked.

"Quite," Frigga told her.

"And we're only hearing about this _now_?" the French goddess demanded.

The Almighty winced as Frigga helped him into a chair on the opposite side of the room from them. "The final stage of the cycle is premature," the Almighty explained. "Unexpected. Usually, there is time to prepare..."

"Wait, stop!" Peorth commanded, forgetting for a moment to whom she was speaking. "'Usually?' This has happened before?!"

The Almighty met her stare. "Yes," he told her. "As a matter of fact, this has happened six times before. And that's why no one is hearing about it. Because I know from experience there is nothing that can be done to stop it. I also know the kind of chaos and suffering that comes when someone in my position announces 'the end of times.'"

"But you're the Almighty One!" Peorth cried. "You created Heaven! My Lord, I don't understand how this could be your will!"

"Peorth, stop," Skuld broke in quietly.

The Yggdrasil tech looked at her friend in shock at her seeming lack of emotion. "Skuld... He..."

"He didn't do anything," Skuld told her. Before Peorth could argue, Skuld cut her off. "He didn't. He's not responsible for this."

"Then who is?!" Peorth demanded.

Skuld paused and rose to her full height before answering.

"I am."

Before anyone could react to that statement, Skuld turned around, walked to her bedroom and shut the door.

888

He stopped and leaned against a rock outcropping, taking deep breaths. Belldandy tended to set a pace that was difficult to follow, navigating up and down the mountainsides with barely any effort at all. She had explained to him that once he learned to accept the flow of will and the good intentions of the life around him, he would have more energy too.

Yeah, he didn't get it either.

It had been three weeks since he had fallen from the sky. It had taken that long to work their way south through the mountain range, but now he could see sprawling green plains just below them. He hoped that would make things a little easier.

"How far to your parents' place?" he called out to her.

Standing on her tip-toes atop a jagged rock outcropping, Belldandy scanned the area ahead of them with her piercing blue eyes and called back an answer.

"A month perhaps," she told him.

"A month?"

"I can usually make the trip faster," she told him, a subtle jab at him.

"I'm going as fast as I can," he said. "Wherever I'm from, I don't think it was very mountainous."

She turned to him and frowned. "I'm sorry," she said. "It sometimes escapes me that you've been thrown into this situation. It just seems that..."

"What?" he asked. Belldandy was usually very plain-spoken. For her to drift off was unnatural.

She turned back to him and smiled. "It just feels like we've been together longer," the goddess told him. "As if you've always been my companion."

"I guess so," he said. "At least from my perspective. I don't know anything else."

"One of my sisters keeps her home in the foothills of this mountain," Belldandy explained. "We can stay there for awhile. You can rest. And she might be able to help you."

"How so?"

Belldandy smiled. "She's the smart one of the family," she said. "Always building things, cataloguing things, trying to figure things out. If there's anyone other than the Almother who knows how to help you, it's her."

"Shoot, I'll settle for a warm bed and a working toilet," he replied.

"Come," she beckoned. "It's not much further."

They made their way down, the grade becoming so steep at one point that he had to hold onto the branches of trees to keep from falling. Belldandy, on the other hand, nimbly leapt from branch to branch, barely bending them as she came to rest on them. It took two hours of this before they reached a point where they could safely rest. They were on flat earth again.

Belldandy leapt to the top of a tree and took a look around. "We're near!" she told him. "It's this way!" With that, she bounded off again, leaving him to huff and puff after her.

"No, really," he wheezed, "I'm good... You go on ahead. I'll catch up... when I learn how to jump ON TOP OF TREES!"

He pushed his way through the evergreen brush, careful of prickly branches that all seemed to grow at the same height as his face. He couldn't have gotten more than a hundred yards when the last branch was pushed aside, and he suddenly found himself in a clearing. There, another hundred yards away was a two-story cottage nestled against the side of the cliff.

The new god jumped as Belldandy suddenly landed next to him. "It's lovely, isn't it?" she asked. "Yazlyn always did have good taste."

"Yazlyn?" he asked. "Is that your sister's name?"

She nodded and led the way toward the cottage's front door.

"My sister leads a very solitary life," Belldandy explained to him before raising her hand to knock. "As such she's a bit... um... different..."

"Different's good," he replied as she knocked daintily on the heavy wooden door. "I like different."

The door opened and a ghoulish face was suddenly an inch from his own, angry red eyes and a screaming mouth with black fangs made him jump backward, but the face followed him.

"Have you come to offer your body to me?" a muffled but feminine voice asked him from behind what he could now see was not a face, but a wooden mask.

"Um... what?" he asked.

"SPIRITS!" the masked figure cried out to the sky, "IS THIS THE EMISSARY YOU HAVE SENT TO JOIN WITH ME AND WITH WHOM I AM TO CONCEIVE THE TRIBAL KING?!"

"I think there's been a mistake!" he cried.

"Yazlyn! What are you doing?!" Belldandy demanded, shocked at the figure's behavior.

He watched as the masked woman reached up and undid the ties of the monstrous visage, pulling it away with a quick breath. The woman beneath was nothing like the ghoul she had been pretending to be. Her skin was pale but flawless. Her brown eyes matched her hair, which flowed down the front of her left shoulder in a braid. She smiled at Belldandy, and the air around her seemed to sparkle.

"Belldandy!" she cried happily. "I'm sorry! I didn't see you there!" She knocked on the mask's forehead. "No peripheral vision in this thing, you see."

"So it would seem" Belldandy conceded.

The brunette looked down at him and smiled. "I am forced to assume that you are not a Gorthar fertility demon here to ravish me and create a new dark king for their hordes, yes?" she asked.

"Not last time I checked," he answered carefully.

"Gorthar fertility demon?" Belldandy asked.

"Oh, yes!" Yazlyn told her as she gestured for them to follow her inside the cottage. "I came upon this mask on my last trip to the village. The man selling it said he procured it from a Gorthar trading post twenty miles up the river. So I researched and found that it's some kind of totem for..." She trailed off and smiled. "I'm sorry, I'm rambling. The long and short of it was I had just put it on to see if there was anything to it when you knocked."

"Honest mistake," he told her.

"Quite," Yazlyn said. "And please forgive me for being rude. I haven't introduced myself or offered you anything to drink..." She stopped and took a breath. "I'm Yazlyn."

"I'm... pleased to meet you," he told her, offering her a bow.

"He doesn't remember his name yet," Belldandy told Yazlyn helpfully. "And he won't take a temporary one."

"Well, that makes perfect sense to me," Yazlyn told them. "Please, sit down, I'll find us something to drink."

"It does?" he asked. "Make sense, I mean?"

"Of course!" Yazlyn called back from the kitchen as he and Belldandy sat on a small, but comfortable couch. "You already have a name, right? Calling you something else would just be confusing." She returned with a tray and three glasses. "Root tea. You'll like this, Belldandy."

He sipped at the brown liquid and found it sweeter than he was expecting. Lowering the glass, he found Yazlyn staring at him.

"You're different from the others," she said. "Droppers, I mean."

"How so?" he asked.

She rested her chin in her hands and smiled. "You just are. I feel as if I know you."

"I had the same impression," Belldandy told her seriously. "Less of a meeting and more a reunion."

"Perhaps we knew each other in a past life!" Yazlyn told him. "I was a tree frog! Were you?! Belldandy was a fish..."

"I don't... think so..." he said. "Look, Belldandy says you know everything about everything."

"Well, not _everything_," Yazlyn said. "I didn't know that mask was a bunch of hokum..."

"The point I'm getting to is that you might know how to help me," he interrupted. "I'm trying to get back to wherever it is I came from. Is there a way that you know of?"

"Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..." Yazlyn replied quietly, her fingers to her lips in thought. "I've never heard of such a thing being done before, but I imagine it's possible."

"Really?" he asked.

"Of course!" she told him. "Something brought you here, which means something should be capable of sending you back. It would seem that you must first determine what that something is."

"Do you know?" the god asked.

"No," she said. "But! I do have a theory!"

"You do?" Belldandy asked.

"Indeed." She leaned in closer to them and whispered. "Giant rabbits."

He looked at her. "Giant rabbits..."

She shrugged. "Given the information available it's just as likely to be correct as any other theory, mathematically speaking, anyway." She sighed. "I'm not that fond of rabbits, though. They always look like they're about to say something... but they never do..."

He stared at her for a solid minute. "Do you have a bathroom?" he asked.

She pointed down the hall. "That way."

"Thank you." Standing up, he decided to salvage something from this visit and walked down the hall.

Yazlyn turned to her sister. "Rowr!" she quipped. "He's cute! Are you going to scoop him up?"

"It hasn't crossed my mind," Belldandy told her.

"Better do it before Frigga sees him," Yazlyn sang. "You know how she is."

"There are plenty of men falling from the sky for her to choose from," Belldandy told her.

"A lot more lately," Yazlyn told her. "Would you like to hear something boringly interesting?"

"Is that not an oxymoron?"

Yazlyn ignored her. "More and more people have been falling from the sky, at a much higher rate than when it started a thousand years ago. I've asked Gaeriel to talk to those she comes across, ask certain questions and tell me what she's found. I've been keeping track of the data and have come to a conclusion."

"Which is?" Belldandy asked.

"The rate has nothing to do with more people coming here, it's that here and wherever they're coming from are moving closer together time-wise."

"I'm sorry, that's not really interesting," Belldandy told her.

"This is what I mean," Yazlyn explained. "Let's say you're sending three people here from Fairy-Tale Giant Rabbit Land. You send one, and he arrives a thousand years ago. You wait five minutes, and the second arrives two hundred years ago. You wait another five minutes and send the third, and he arrives now. Although the spacing is the same on that end, it's different on this end. We're slowing down, relative to Fairy-Tale Giant Rabbit Land... or they're speeding up... Or a mixture of both."

Belldandy shook her head. "Still not interesting," she said.

Yazlyn rolled her eyes. "Well, it is!" She was quiet for a moment. "So... what will you do with the man with no name?"

"He wants to speak to Mother," Belldandy told her.

"That should be amusing," Yazlyn replied.

A hurried knock at the door ended the conversation. Yazlyn picked up her mask and started for the front door. "If you're a fertility demon, you're too late!" she called. "I'm not in the mood anymore!"

She opened the door and found herself looking down at the ground at a short creature with what appeared to be the head of a salmon and the body of a kangaroo. It's body was covered in short, brown and black fur that only ended at the top of his fish-like head.

"Hello!" Yazlyn greeted him.

"Milady!" the creature panted. "We beg you for help!"

He heard this last part as he came down the hallway from the bathroom. Belldandy had already risen to her feet, observing the conversation with great interest.

"Help?" Yazlyn asked. "What has happened?"

"It's the Ursines," the creature told her. "They have attacked the village. They are demanding that the Almother give them dominion over this continent."

"And if she does not give it them, they will burn the village and kill everyone in it."

_Author's Notes_

_Yes, a kangaroo with a salmon head. If El Hazard can get away with a bear with a dolphin's head, I can do the same with a salmaroo._


	5. Helpless by the River

AMG belongs to Kosuke Fujishima.

**Blessings: Shattered Sky**

**Chapter 5**

**Helpless by the River**

* * *

Dear Lenus,

There's an old Earth saying: "Hope is not a strategy," and yet it's all I've got left. It would have been easier to bear this without any.

Love,

Skuld

* * *

The Almighty watched his youngest daughter leave the room and turned back to the goddesses still assembled there.

"Well," he said quietly, "She's not _totally_ wrong..."

Frigga gave him an acidic look and started after Skuld. "I will speak to her."

"My Lord," Peorth said quietly, "Forgive my rudeness earlier. I was shocked. I simply cannot accept that You are..." She trailed off, not even able to articulate such an absurd idea out loud.

"Everything dies, Peorth," the Almighty told her. "Entropy claims all things."

"How did this happen?" Peorth asked.

The Almighty adjusted himself in his chair, wincing as if the act brought him continuous pain. "All things have a cycle," he said. "The network of realms and universes all started with one, one realm, one tree, one god. From there, it grows. One becomes two, two becomes four, and so on. As entropy begins to take the light from each realm, the connections between the realms, the hardlines that we use to travel between them begin to fray. They tug at one another until one realm breaks free of the others. A realm not part of the network lies outside of Creation and becomes its own Creation. With the right ingredients, it grows. As it grows, the old Creation dies."

"What ingredients, if I may ask?" the Professor spoke up for the first time.

The Almighty's eye narrowed at the machine. "Is that an AI? I don't remember authorizing a new AI..."

"Er... no," the Professor responded. "This is... um..." His voice turned flat and expressionless. "This is a recording."

"A recording, huh?" the Almighty asked.

"Beep."

He rolled his eye. "As the question is pertinent, I will answer," he said. "The core of Creation is a World Tree. Without a World Tree, one cannot become two." He trailed off. "There is another necessary ingredient, however..."

888

She found her daughter staring out her bedroom window at the rain that pelted the glass. Skuld didn't turn to face her mother. It was hard to face anyone right now.

"Skuld," Frigga began slowly. "This is _not_ your fault."

"I read the report you left open for me," Skuld told her, still not turning to her. "'The Flood appears as the last stage of Dimensional Mitosis triggered when one realm breaks away from the others and becomes seated in the spiritual plane.'" She finally turned to the godly queen and shook her head. "Every realm in Creation, aside from the ones already eaten by the Flood, are accounted for... except one." She took a breath and hung her head. "Someone... someone shut the door after I hit the timer. Instead of being destroyed with the Roundtable... it was cut off from the rest of the network."

"There was no way for you to know," Frigga said. "No reason to suspect..."

"It doesn't change the fact that _I_ was the one that rigged the tri-plutonium to blow," Skuld told her. "That _I_ hit the timer and ran." She bit her lip. "For years afterward... I blamed myself for killing Urd and Sensei... Now I get to live with killing trillions of others."

Frigga took a breath. She didn't want to be like this, but time was short and there was no choice. "Skuld, sweetie... I love you. I know you know that. But right now, I need you to pull yourself together."

Skuld's mouth opened, but no sound came out.

"You need to listen to me right now," Frigga told her, her voice colder than the Norn had ever heard it. "Because Creation needs you and there's no time for guilt or self reflection. You are going to listen to what I say next, and by the Almighty's good eye you are going to believe it because I'm not sure we have much hope if you don't."

"Hope?" Skuld breathed in disbelief.

Frigga held up a finger, cutting her daughter off. "You are not responsible for this, do you understand? You weren't even a cadet yet. Your commander gave you orders, and you followed them. You did what you knew to be right. Blame the Favrashi, blame your Father, blame Gwydion if you must. But you _will_ rid yourself of this guilt _right now._"

The matron sat on the edge of the bed. "And yes," she said quietly, "There is hope."

Skuld sat next to her. "The Almighty seems to believe there is none," she reminded her mother.

"Your Father is playing a role he's known he would have to play for billions of years," Frigga told her with a sigh. "Straight by the book. But I'm a mother, and a mother knows there is hope for as long as her children breathe." She turned and took Skuld's hands in her own. "Your Father grows weaker by the day, but the flipside of that coin is that the one who will replace him grows stronger at the same time, perhaps even strong enough to stop this."

"Can that be done?" Skuld asked her, a resonance of hope in her voice for the first time.

"It has never been tried, to my knowledge," Frigga told her, "But the circumstances here are hardly normal. The Flood is early, and Creation is still healthy. If the wandering realm can be reconnected, perhaps..." She trailed off.

"But we need the new Almighty's help," Skuld finished.

"And that may be incredibly difficult," Frigga told her. "For your Father has no sense of the new Creation, but we do know this: Creation can only grow from a healthy tree, and a healthy tree can only grow when tended by a Norn."

Skuld looked at her mother, unwilling to let herself believe what Frigga seemed to be saying.

Frigga nodded at her unasked question. "Yes, dear. Your sister is the mother of that new world. She must be. There are no others but you and your sister."

"The last time I heard from Urd," Skuld told her carefully, "... was a broken transmission from Yazlyn... and it sounded like they had just been ambushed by the Favrashi. Sensei went after them, and that was the last we heard from any of them."

"And therein lies another danger," Frigga told her. "It may be your sister... or it may be an Angel who has taken her. If that is so, then the Favrashi have won, and Creation is theirs."

888

"In the past there has been more lead time, more warning as to when the bonds would break, and normally I would have been able to choose the next Almighty Myself," the Almighty told them. "That didn't happen this time. 144,000 of the best mortals and gods are chosen to become the seeds of the next civilization. As it is now, we'll be lucky to get forty thousand."

Belldandy stepped toward him. "Keiichi san... You sent Keiichi san there..."

"I did," the Almighty told her. "You have to admit, he's worthy of it."

The Norn couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You knew, Father... You knew beforehand... and... and you _didn't tell me_?!"

"What would I have told you, Belldandy?" the Almighty asked her. "'It's the end of the world, and I have a way out for your husband, but shhhh! Don't tell anyone?'" He sat back painfully. "I knew it would be painful for you, but I assumed that you would be grateful for the fact that he would live on as a god."

"Is that what _he_ would have chosen?" Belldandy asked him, her voice tinged with enough anger to make Peorth take a step back. "You knew his heart that well? You knew _mine_ that well?"

The Almighty trained his eye on her. "You're thinking of yourself," he told her. "_Your_ feelings."

"YES!" Belldandy cried. "YES! I am! All my life I have served! Did it occur to you that had we known the end was truly _the end_ that we would have handled this differently!? That instead of saying 'I'll see you soon,' I could have said 'good-bye'?!"

"I did what was best for you," the Almighty told her. "What was best for him. What would you rather I had done, Belldandy? Allow you a taste of the grief others will get to feel? Trillions of people will soon know what it's like to watch their loved ones disappear forever, to have to explain to their children that..."

Belldandy went pale. The Almighty didn't even have to finish for her to know what he had done. For years she had asked herself why... and now, suddenly, it was clear.

"Creation didn't have a future," Belldandy whispered, a sob dying in her throat. "So you took ours away pre-emptively. To 'spare' us..."

"Belldandy," the Almighty began. "I wished only to spare you pain."

The Norn walked slowly to the door, her hand resting on the knob before she turned back to him. "Then you should have struck me dead when Keiichi san died," she said. "So I could have at least died believing in you."

With that, she opened the door and left the apartment.

888

"I feel I have burdened you," Frigga said apologetically.

Skuld was at her closet, changing from her normal duty uniform to her armored battle uniform, something she had designed herself in her early days in the Division. She snapped the wrist cuffs on and opened the closet door, rooting through it for her deployment gear.

"You have," she told her mother. "With hope, and a part of me wants to damn you for it."

"And the other?" Frigga asked.

"The other is willing to thank you for at least making the next two years worth living," she said. She pulled her bag from the closet and tossed it on the bed. "The Favrashi knew this would happen, it was all part of the plan, right?"

"That makes sense, yes," Frigga told her.

"Which means for the last 25 years, they've known what's coming, and something tells me they're not the kind to just give in." She turned to her mother to explain. "Hild thinks the Favrashi have a way to Urd, and after hearing all this, I'm willing to agree with her. And I think I know where it is."

"And if you do not find it there?" Frigga asked.

Skuld threw up her hands. "Then I guess I get to spend the next two years trying to come up with something else, but for now I have nothing better to do."

The queen nodded at this. "One thing more, Hon, if I may burden you further."

"What is it?"

Frigga met her eyes and released a breath. "You must take your sister with you."

Skuld paused. "Mom... I don't know what's waiting for us out there. Maybe it's Urd... Maybe it's something awful. It's no place for..."

"You must take her with you," Frigga repeated.

Skuld considered arguing further, but after a moment saw little point. If she failed, Belldandy and everyone else would be dead in two years anyway. She nodded. "Very well."

Frigga nodded and stood up, giving her daughter a hug.

"Mom," Skuld began quietly. "I know you don't tell people what you see, but... Tell me... Tell me this is going to work out."

The older goddess rested her hands on her daughter's shoulders. "I can tell you this," she said. "You will die in your own bed, at peace... with yourself and the world."

"I'll take it," Skuld told her. "Mom, I..."

"I won't say good-bye," Frigga told her. "I'll say 'good luck and I love you.'"

"I love you, Mom."

"You should go," Frigga told her. "We're counting seconds now."

Skuld grabbed her bag and started for the door.

888

The rain was still pelting at the window that overlooked the plot that was to one day hold her new garden, but along with the sound of water hitting glass was the sound of it hitting the marble floor below her chair. She had walked here in the rain, and having arrived immediately sat down and began to stare out at the barren plot of soil that had somehow become a metaphor for her life.

Keiichi was gone, beyond her reach, and no matter how hard she tried she could not reconcile the idea that she would never see her husband again. Where was he? Was he safe? Did he know what had happened or why?

Was he, even now, searching for her?

The future had been taken from them, and now there was nothing left to do but sit here in her empty house and wait for the world to end.

If she had known... how different might the last 60 years have been?

She raised her head as the sound of tapping reached her ears. Her eyes found her sister's concerned expression in the doorway, her knuckles resting on the doorframe where they landed.

"Peorth told me what happened," Skuld told her.

"It is His will," Belldandy replied dully.

"His will doesn't mean as much as it used to," Skuld said.

"I'm going to sit here and wait," Belldandy told her. "If there is no future and the present must be endured without Keiichi san, then there is no point in going through the motions of normal life. I'm going to sit here and wait for The Flood to come and take me."

Skuld leaned against the stone fireplace as she digested that statement. "What if I told you there might be a way to get to him?"

Belldandy looked at her sister with doubt in her eyes. What could she even believe anymore?

"It's a longshot," Skuld said. "But Mom has asked me to check it out. We might be able to stop this."

"How?" the Norn asked.

"Come with me," Skuld told her. "And we'll find out together."

888

Shara looked up in mild surprise when Skuld walked into the briefing room with Belldandy in tow. Leaning on the light table, her skin reflected the eerie blue glow produced by the briefing table's holographic matrix. She gave her boss a nod in greeting.

"Who were you able to get?" Skuld asked without preamble.

Shara nodded to the gods and goddess milling around in the back of the room. "All of them. Even managed to break Meness out of Task Force Pegasus to fly the bird."

"Like a bloody reunion, mate," a tall, dark-haired god spoke up as he approached from the back. He smiled as he offered Skuld his hand. "Too long, Commander."

"Good to see you, Voltras," Skuld replied. She turned to her sister. "Belldandy, this is Voltras." She nodded to the others as they approached, starting with a very young looking god who reminded her greatly of a young Keiichi Morisato. "Meness... and our dynamic duo, Hawk and Kestrel."

Another god and goddess with very similar features including the same shade of reddish brown hair, obviously siblings, gave Belldandy a nod.

"Everyone, this is my sister, Belldandy," Skuld announced. "She's coming with us."

Shara arched an eyebrow at this announcement but said nothing. She had kept what she had told the others deliberately vague, unsure as to how much Skuld wanted to divulge, now she felt as if Skuld were keeping things from her.

"All right, here's the mission," Skuld began, approaching the table. A high-def hologram of what looked like ancient ruins appeared about a foot above the table and began to slowly rotate. "We have intel suggesting that the Favrashi had a research and development base in Realm Three-Oh-Three. That same source suggests that the base has been abandoned, but that's no reason to start taking things on faith. In two days the Demons are going to simultaneously hit more than a dozen Favrashi bases in this same part of Creation. We're going to take this one."

"Working for the Demons again, are we?" Voltras asked.

"No," Skuld told him. "I imagine if they knew about this place, we'd end up having some very serious 'discussions' about what's what. The primary objective is tech, exactly what I don't know... but I'll know it when I see it. If no tech, then records, blueprints, design specifications, any data we can collect."

"What's this tech supposed to do?" Hawk asked.

"Long-range matter transmission," Skuld answered. "I can't be more specific about it right now. There is a secondary objective." The hologram zoomed in, focusing on an area adjacent to the temple. "This base was also the site of a Favrashi POW camp."

"POWs?" Kestrel muttered.

"You think we're going to find prisoners from 25 years ago?" Hawk asked.

"I doubt it," Skuld told him. "But at the very least we may find records, messages from them. I'm sure there are more than a few gods and goddesses who would be relieved to know that their loved ones weren't traitors to the Almighty One after all. Questions?"

"Who's our back-up?" Voltras asked.

"Since when do you expect back-up?" Shara replied with a grin.

The Valkyrie returned the smile. "Just thought it'd make for a nice change, is all," he told her.

"We're on our own," Skuld told them. "The D3, the D2, Michael... the Almighty... none of them know about this op."

"It's a damn nostalgia op," Kestrel threw in.

"On that note," Shara began as Skuld stepped back from the table. She deposited a small box on the table. "You know the deal. No name tags, unit patches, identifying personal possession, etcetera, etcetera..."

Belldandy watched as the other gods began pulling off parts of their uniforms and depositing them in the box.

_Identifying personal possessions_...

She looked down at her wedding ring and slowly pulled it from her finger. Her husband had had it inscribed before the ceremony, and the block letters inside the ring now twinkled at her in the room's blue light.

HOME.

Tears came to her eyes. She couldn't. She couldn't give up her ring. It was all she had left of him, all she would ever have left if they failed here.

She turned as she felt a hand land on her shoulder. Skuld's eyes met hers, and her younger sister quietly shook her head before moving to the other end of the room. Belldandy smiled, loving her sister even more than she thought she could. She put the ring back on and turned, watching as Shara removed an amulet from around her neck.

A small ruby set in black onyx and gold hung from a black and red ribbon as the Valkyrie dropped it in the box. Making conversation, Belldandy nodded to it.

"It's beautiful," she said.

Shara smiled at her. "It's an Onyx Star," she said. "Awarded to those whose valor contributes to the security... of the Demon Realm."

Belldandy blinked at this announcement.

The Valkyrie officer smiled at her. "Me and your sister both have one."

The Norn broke away from the conversation and walked toward her sister, who was speaking to someone through a viewing mirror in the corner of the room.

"The realm is all but gone," the goddess on the other end said. "The weather patterns in what's left have become so dangerous that there's not even any animal life left alive. We predict the realm will be gone within the next six hours."

"It's not going to stop there, no matter what Michael implies," Skuld told her. "Begin an evacuation of every realm along that hardline and start filling up uninhabited realms in the network core. Every ship you can muster that carry people or cargo. Every ship that can't I want patrolling our outposts in the Second Spiral Arm."

"Yes, Ma'am," the goddess said. "Where will you be?"

"Around," Skuld told her. "The XO is in charge while I'm gone. I left instructions for him. Out here." The image cut off, and Skuld took a breath. She turned and found her sister standing there. "Don't worry about your ring," she said, predicting a question. "It's not going to ID you."

Belldandy stared at her, suddenly realizing that despite writing on her, she really knew nothing about her sister, her life, the challenges she'd faced. It made her feel as if she had let her younger sister down, that she hadn't been there for her.

"Thank you," she said.

Skuld shook her head. "Like I said, it's not going to..."

"No," Belldandy cut her off. "I mean... for everything." Skuld blinked at her in confusion. "I... I never kept up with things like the civil war or the angels or... any of it. I was focused on my own life, my own happiness. And the whole time, you and people like Shara and the others... I can't imagine what kinds of things you've had to do to ensure that happiness for me."

Skuld's mouth opened and closed noiselessly. "Oneesama," she whispered finally. "That's _why_ we do it."

"At some point in all this, Skuld, I would like for you to tell me about it," Belldandy told her. "I want to know about your life."

The younger Norn didn't answer. Instead, she nodded toward the door to her left. "We need to arm up, and then we'll be ready to go, okay?"

Belldandy nodded. She followed her sister through the door, expecting to see racks of gleaming swords and the points of spears glinting in the artificial light that bathed the room. Instead, she found a rack with what looked like rifles similar to the kind she had seen on TV during her time on Earth. Skuld pulled a smaller version of the rifles from the rack and checked it over.

"Things have changed," Belldandy said. "Lind always used an axe..."

"We still have those personal weapons," Skuld told her. "These are a little something I cooked up about three years into my time at Division. They're not really weapons in their own right. They're more like a focusing lens."

The others were coming into the room now to draw arms themselves, and Belldandy arched an eyebrow.

"You know how when you want to blast a demon you have to cast a spell, hold your hands out, chant a certain way, wave your hands and your ass a certain way, etcetera?" Shara asked as she pulled a rifle from the rack. "Your sister decided that shit was too slow. You see, you form a connection with one of these babies, and it draws on your own power and focuses it into directed energy. It doesn't run out of power until you do... or the focusing crystal breaks... or..."

"I get it, it's not perfect," Skuld told her irritably. "You gotta admit, though, it's better than trying to aim down the blade of a scimitar."

Shara gave Belldandy a grin and a wink.

"If it's all the same to you," Belldandy said, "I would rather go without."

"Don't worry, love," Voltras told her as he stepped up behind her, "Our squad of ultimate badasses will protect you."

Belldandy tensed as she felt the god place a hand on her hip. She turned to him quickly. "Thank you for your concern, Voltras san. However, I only allow my husband to touch me in such a fashion."

The Valkyrie cleared his throat, chagrined. "Apologies."

"Shot down!" Kestrel called from the other end of the armory.

Standing nearby, Skuld smiled.

888

Belldandy was staring down at her wedding ring, caressing the gold band with the index finger of her other hand when she heard someone call her name. Looking up, she found the female Valkyrie, Kestrel, looking back at her from the seat on the opposite side of the Seraphim they were travelling in. As far as military transportation went, it was actually rather comfortable. Individual seats lined the bulkheads with the pilot's compartment on one end and a set of clamshell doors on the other. She had expected seat belts or restraints, but instead a gravity emitter made sure no one was thrown from their seats. She could move around or get up, but if she moved too suddenly, she could feel a gentle force pressing against her.

"I'm sorry, what did you say?" Belldandy asked.

Kestrel smiled. "I have to ask," she began, "What was the Commander like as a kid?"

The Norn looked to her left and found Skuld sitting on the seat closest to the cockpit. She had a crystal tucked into her ear with her fingers, listening to something intently, and didn't seem to notice the exchange.

Belldandy thought on the question for a moment. "Innocent," she said finally.

"'Innocent?'" Shara asked from her seat next to Belldandy's and closest to the clamshell. "That's not a word I'd use for the boss after hearing about some of the stuff she did as a kid."

"I don't mean that," Belldandy said. "Just that... she didn't have these worries back then. Her spirit was more free."

She decided to change the subject. "How long have you known Skuld?" she asked.

Kestrel gestured to the gods around her. "We all go back about 15 years," she said. "We were all 3rd STG with her. Crazy shit, I can tell you that."

Belldandy smiled. "So you're all friends," she concluded.

"We all came up together," Voltras spoke up from his spot on Kestrel's left. "Damn near inseparable. This one time, me, Hawk and Lenus, we..."

Shara stamped her foot on the deck and gave him an acidic look. Voltras trailed off, seeming to realize he had made a mistake. He looked quickly to Skuld, but the younger Norn gave no sign as to having heard him.

"I mean... yeah, we're cordial."

"We're over the target area," Skuld suddenly announced before Belldandy could seek some kind of clarification as to what had just transpired. She looked up and found her sister approaching. "Aerial insert. We don't know for sure what's down there. Blue Team on the roof. Gold Team through the front door. Wait for my go."

"What should I do?" Belldandy asked her.

"You stay here," Skuld told her. "Quick and quiet," she ordered the rest.

They all stood and checked over their weapons as the rear clamshell opened revealing a violet sky. Skuld took the lead, standing at the edge, the wind whipping her hair around. She turned, gave Belldandy a smile and a wave...

And was suddenly sucked out the door. The others followed, and Belldandy, taken by curiosity, rose from her seat and looked over the edge. The Valkyries were falling toward a group of ruins that looked like the ones in the holographic map. They grew smaller and smaller as they fell, and then larger again as their white wings extended, slowing their fall dramatically. She backed up as the clamshell began to close again.

"Be careful, Skuld," she whispered.

888

As Skuld's left foot hit the granite that made up the temple's roof-top, her wings were already phasing back into her body. By the time her right foot hit the ground, they were already gone, and her carbine was up in a ready position. She heard Kestrel land just behind her and started scanning the rooftop, searching for movement. Seeing nothing, she started moving for a depression in the roof, Kestrel right behind her.

The depression turned out to be a glass skylight, very much out of place for an "ancient" temple, telling Skuld that even if this wasn't a Favrashi base, it was certainly cover for _something_.

"Gold ready," she heard Shara say through her earpiece.

"Hold one," Skuld whispered back. She nodded to Kestrel, who slung her rifle and knelt next to the glass. Reaching down, she placed her palms flat against the glass and closed her eyes. Both the glass and the goddess's fingers seemed to melt at the point where they met, congealing together. Kestrel gave Skuld a nod, and the commander leaned over, tracing a large circle in the glass with her finger. Moving around the other goddess, she reached under Kestrel's arms and picked up the trail where she had left off.

When the circle was complete, Kestrel pulled, silently hefting a circle of glass from the skylight and carefully depositing it nearby.

"Deploying sensors," Skuld announced as she pulled a pair of red spheres the size of tennis balls from her belt. She gave both a squeeze and then threw them through the skylight. She checked the display on the left forearm of her armor as the spheres made their way through the temple's hallways and rooms. Kestrel kept watch around them, searching the roof for movement.

So far the probes weren't picking up anything, no movement, no life forms, nothing. She hefted her carbine and swung her legs over the hole in the glass. "Blue moving," she announced. "Gold, go."

She dropped through the skylight and felt every foot of the 75-foot drop to the floor as dead, stale air whipped past her face. She hit the ground and raised her carbine, moving three feet forward so Kestrel could land behind her.

Skuld lowered her carbine and looked up at the monstrosity that met her. The chamber they were in was mammoth, easily two hundred meters square and 75 feet tall. In the center was a raised circular dais and above it a smooth octagonal stalactite of metal pointing down at the dais like a dagger. Surrounding the dais were dead holomonitors and computer terminals.

Kestrel hit the ground behind her and looked up in awe.

"Blue, Gold," Shara called. "We're inside. Lower floor is clear. Haven't found anything yet."

"That's okay," Skuld said. "I think we did."

"Well," Kestrel remarked. "That was easy."

888

Belldandy found her sister exactly where she knew she would, at the base of the biggest machine in the temple. The Valkyries were busy moving supplies from the Seraphim into the camp they established in the main chamber, but Skuld was busily attaching computers to portable generators and turning things on. The chamber was now flooded with a dull hum that permeated the temple's bones.

"Have you had any luck?" she asked her sister.

"Depends on your definition of 'luck,'" Skuld replied, connecting two wires and watching a holomonitor sputter to life.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean it smells, Sis," Skuld told her. "You see that jungle out there? I've worked in plenty of jungles before, and one thing they're really good for is overrunning and eating up abandoned places. Look around. There's no way this place was abandoned more than a month ago, but someone sure went through a lot of trouble to make it look like it's been dead for years."

"To what end?" Belldandy asked.

Skuld paused in her work. "I don't know. But the clock's ticking."

She made another connection, and another holomonitor sputtered to life. This one actually had a prompt.

PLEASE ENTER USER NAME AND PASSWORD

"Now, we're getting somewhere," Skuld muttered, moving over to the keyboard. "Designation," she ordered.

THIS CLASS TWO SERVER IS DESIGNATED FIVE-H-THREE-ONE-D-ZERO-N.

"And what, 5H31D0N, is your primary function?" Skuld asked.

THIS CLASS TWO SERVER IS DESIGNED TO UNDERSTAND AND FIND LOOPHOLES IN THE LAWS OF PHYSICS. FURTHER INFORMATION WILL REQUIRE A USER NAME AND PASSWORD.

"How will you unlock it?" Belldandy asked her.

Skuld growled. "It's a Class Two server," she said. "It's got enough processing power to snake around any attempt to hack it the old fashioned way." She cracked her knuckles. "And as mentioned earlier, I'm on a schedule."

Belldandy sensed what her sister was about to do. "Are you sure that's wise?" she asked.

"Nope," Skuld replied, placing her hands on the terminal. "But every second I waste fucking with this thing the Flood eats another ten meters of Creation." She closed her eyes and reached out to the machine, grasping at the wisps that made up its spirit. It was easier with advanced computer systems than it was with simpler machines like Banpei. A complex system like a Class 2 was already very close to being an AI anyway, so it shouldn't take more than...

"EXCUSE ME..."

She opened her eyes and found the monitor's blinking cursor staring back at her.

"YOU'RE IN MY SPOT."

888

Metheus entered the throne room to find Loki sitting on the Onyx Throne.

The fact that he still seemed to be breathing struck the demonic general as odd, so rather than storm up to the Angel and toss him bodily from Her Majesty's throne, he approached more warily.

"Is it a Favrashi trait to throw caution to the wind and do things that are obviously foolhardy?" he asked.

Loki noticed him and stood up. "Oh, pardon me," he said in a tone that made it clear he didn't care. "I was just trying it on. When, after all, would I ever get another chance?"

"Never," Metheus told him. "Because if it happens again, I'll remove your head from your shoulders and use it to decorate my fish tank."

Loki arched an eyebrow. "Have you considered seeking anger management counseling? It might help."

Metheus ignored the jab. "Task Force 42 is in position. How long do you want them to stay there?"

Loki shrugged and walked back to the throne, making a show of admiring the detail work. "I would imagine they should stay there until the attack is over."

"Attack?" Metheus asked. "This was a feint."

Loki turned to him and shook his head. "No, you see, it's half-assing things like that that got us into this mess in the first place. If there's no attack, then it's all exposed as a lie... which it is... The only way to truly deceive someone is to make a lie the truth for as long as possible."

Metheus stared at him for several moments. He had never heard a god speak in such a way. "They're your people," he countered, more for the sake of argument than any real concern.

"No!" Loki shot back with an upraised finger. "_My_ people... never gave up. _My_ people... didn't just slink off into the hinterlands when it got too tough. I promised _my_ people that I would bring them to Sanctuary." He took a breath and finished. "I'm a man of my word."

Metheus shrugged. "As you wish. Dead Angels are no concern of mine."

"That's nice of you to say," Loki returned.

The general smiled. "I mean it in perfect sincerity." He started for the door again. "I would keep that in mind, were I you."

888

He hit the ground hard and had the wind knocked out of him, unable to ward off the impact with his hands shackled behind him. He coughed dirt from his mouth and struggled to his knees, turning his head to look up at the monster that had tossed him.

Having no memory of his life meant that, for the most part, he had no memory of his world. He did, however, know when one animal resembled something from his own world and as such knew that the thing that had thrown him down was the biggest grizzly bear he had ever known/heard of/or seen. In the week they had been travelling to this village, Belldandy had told him what an Ursine was, and his mind simply filled in the blank with "bear."

While he knew his memory wasn't perfect, however, he knew that wherever it was he came from, the bears didn't talk... or breathe fire.

The Ursine looked down at him from about two stories above him and snorted in derision.

"Are you all right?"

He turned and found Belldandy next to him, restrained as he was and concern in her eyes.

"Yeah," he said. "Nothing broken, I don't think. So what's the plan? How do you break out of these things?"

"Oh!" Yazlyn spoke up from the other side of Belldandy, "You don't."

"I thought we were gods," he noted.

"Yes, and that's true," Yazlyn replied. "But in a way, so are they."

He looked at her dully. "You know, I'm not sure I would have come along if I had known that beforehand."

"Enough," Belldandy chided them both. "We must find a way out of this predicament."

He looked out at their surroundings. The Salmaroo village was a simple affair set high atop a cliff next to the top of a waterfall. The buildings were all wood and mud, and there appeared to be one Ursine for every Salmaroo. They were gathered together with the town's residents and surrounded by the giant bears at the edge of the town square.

A roar from the center of the square grabbed his attention, and his eyes found an Ursine a head above the others. His fur was a mottled white and brown, though the armor he wore was a shimmering black. An axe with a blade the size of the god himself was strapped to his back.

The monstrosity raised a paw, and the other bears roared a cheer.

"Ursines of the Savra Valley," it called, its words much more refined than he would have expected from an animal. "Did I not promise you our grievances would reach the Almother with action? Did I not promise you that we would be taken seriously? Now look..." He gestured to the gods and snorted. "By seizing one fish-eater village, we have the respect we deserve!"

The Ursines roared in approval.

"And more," the chieftain went on. "An emissary from the Almother has arrived."

He turned as the sound of tinkling bells fell on his ears and saw a tiny human-like figure with butterfly wings float gently past them and up to the chieftain. The butterfly pixie bowed to him in respect, but when it spoke, the god couldn't make out its words. The chieftain's booming voice provided only half of the conversation.

"The Almother has allowed these gods to move into our lands, lands that were promised to us in perpetuity," the chieftain thundered.

The pixie replied to this, and the chieftain growled loudly in its face. "We have heard many promises from the Almother! But as long as these... transients... rain down upon our land and build homes in our hunting grounds, we can only see it for the invasion that it is."

The pixie replied to this, and the chieftain stood taller.

"But it is a war, Almother," he said. "And if you will not be the ally we were to you, than we must count you as our adversary. We are willing to fight and die for our land."

The chieftain suddenly found the pixie at the end of his snout, pointing a tiny rage-filled finger in his face.

"You think me unserious?!" the chieftain roared back at it. "Then see now how serious I am!" He rose up to his full height and made an announcement. "To show the Almother our resolve, I shall kill one of the gods we have captured today!"

The Almother's emissary responded to this in fury, flying around the chieftain's face, who only batted it aside as he made his way toward them.

"Well," Yazlyn remarked, "I'm sure that sounds worse than it actually is."

The chieftain leaned over and stared at them. "Now then," he rumbled. "Which shall it be?"

Belldandy did a double take as the god next to her stood up.

"Me," he said.

The chieftain appeared skeptical. "Who are you to the Almother?" he asked. "A waste of a good execution, I think."

"What are you doing?!" Belldandy cried. "Sit down!" She turned her attention to the chieftain. "You have no right to do this! To anyone! Release us at once, and the Almother will forgive you!"

"Silence, daughter of the Almother!" the chieftain roared at her. "I will decide whom to kill here."

"Then it should be me," the new god spoke up again. The chieftain looked at him again, but didn't yell as he had to Belldandy. He cocked his head to Yazlyn and Belldandy. "They're the Almother's daughters, right?" he asked. "Do you think she's ever going to just give you what you want if you hurt them?"

"Shut up!" Belldandy hissed.

He ignored her. "Then there's me," he said. "I fell out of the sky a few weeks ago. I'm the guy pushing you off your land. There's a bunch of guys like me. Losing me isn't going to make the Almother cry, but it'll get your point across, don't you think?"

"This man is an imbecile!" Belldandy declared loudly. "And is not to be taken seriously!"

"He does make very good points," Yazlyn noted.

"You are not helping!"

The chieftain growled low in his throat. "He is indeed an imbecile," he noted. "But he makes a practical argument."

He grunted as a pair of furry paws gripped his shoulders and pulled him from the crowd, the Salmaroos crying out as they rushed to get out of the way.

"Stop! Don't take him!" Belldandy screamed at them. "Take me instead! A daughter of the Almother!"

He turned his head as the Ursine guard pushed him forward. "Shut up, Belldandy," he said. His voice softened a moment later. "And thanks for everything." The guard shoved him roughly, and he nearly tripped as he was maneuvered to the edge of the cliff.

He nearly fell over, but managed to catch his balance at the last second, his eyes getting a good view of the drop facing him. He turned and found the chieftain facing him.

"What is your name, god?" the chieftain asked. "So that I know who it is I've killed."

"I don't have one," he replied, his heart racing in his throat.

The chieftain hefted the axe. "Then I shall remember you as 'that imbecile from the village.'"

Behind the chieftain, Belldandy was struggling in the grip of another Ursine guard, screaming for the chieftain to stop.

"Have you any final words?"

He swallowed, searching for some. "I'm sorry, Bell," he finally whispered.

The chieftain raised the axe over his head. He watched the bear's muscles tense as he began his swing and closed his eyes.

888

Belldandy struggled against the bear's grip as the chieftain swung, but before the axe could hit, something struck the Ursine in the shoulder, throwing off his swing. The massive axe struck the ground in front of the god, and the ground cracked as the chieftain roared in pain.

The ground gave way beneath the god's feet, and he cried out as he disappeared over the cliff. All around them, Ursines were falling down, the fletches of arrows stuck three feet into their bodies.

The chieftain rose to his feet and roared. "VALKYRIES! FIGHT, URSINES! FIGHT!"

The guard in front of Belldandy suddenly let her go and whipped its body around. She looked up and found a god clinging to the bear's neck, his dagger stabbing in and out of the creature in a blur.

She leapt to her feet and kicked Yazlyn. "We must get under cover!" she said.

As she led her sister under a rock outcropping, she looked up and saw more gods floating gently to the ground with their outstretched wings. They had used her friend's execution as a distraction and were attacking from above. Now that they were roused, the Ursines were fighting back. She saw one goddess duck under an Ursine hammer and slice through its leg with her sword.

The chieftain had leapt to the top of another outcropping and was exhorting his men to fight.

Belldandy ducked as a stray arrow hit the rock near her. Looking up again, she saw a familiar god flying overhead and screamed up at him.

"FATHER!"

The god wheeled around and dived right into the largest mass of Ursines, blasts of blue light leaping from his left hand while the sword in his right cut through the mass in his path. Swinging around, he cut one after another through the legs and lower abdomen, leaving a bloody path of destruction that led to the base of the rock outcropping upon which the chieftain stood.

A final pair of Ursines rushed toward him, and the Valkyrie swung around, burying his sword into the chest of the first. In a flash of light, a winged angel burst from his shoulders, bow in hand. It aimed over the shoulder of the first Ursine and fired off a shot at the second, its arrow taking off the top right half of the creature's skull. Both Ursines fell to the ground.

The Valkyrie looked up at the chieftain. "Face the Almother's vengeance, Galtrist!"

The chieftain swung his axe back and forth as if warming up. "Gwydion," he growled. He leapt down, the ground shaking at the impact, and rose to his full height. "Now I know war has come."

Gwydion raised his saber. "You should have listened to the Almother, Galtrist," he told the chieftain. "She was working on a solution."

"I have already found one," the chieftain announced coldly. With that, he darted forward, his axe striking the ground where Gwydion had stood a second before. Looking up, he found the god diving over his head, his saber whipping out and cutting the Ursine through the left eye.

The chieftain roared in pain and swung blindly, but Gwydion was already moving again, over the Ursine's shoulder and on the ground behind him. Galtrist was silent, and a moment later Belldandy could see why as the chieftain's head fell from his shoulders.

Her father sheathed his saber. "Gaeriel!" he called.

"That's the last of them," her sister announced, landing next to her father.

"Father!" Belldandy called out. "Over here!"

Gwydion caught sight of his other daughters and made his way toward them. He shook his head. "I warned your mother that the more interesting creatures she fashions, the more interesting times she faces in the future."

Belldandy turned and let her silver-haired sister cut through her restraints with her sword.

"But," he finished with a smile. "She never did listen to me. Are you both all right?"

"Oh, quite well, Father, thank you," Yazlyn replied.

"No! We're not!" Belldandy cried. She rushed toward the edge of the cliff and looked down at the river hundreds of feet below.

"What is it?" Gwydion asked.

"Just before you attacked, my friend fell over the cliff!" Belldandy told him quickly. "Father, you have to find him!"

"I know what she's talking about," Gaeriel spoke up. "They were all focused on him, that's when we attacked."

Gwydion knelt at the cliff's edge and looked down. "Was he a god?" he asked.

"Yes!"

He nodded as he gazed down at the rapids below. "Doesn't look too bad, then. He probably survived that." He stood up and put his hand on his daughter's shoulder. "Don't worry, Belldandy, we'll find him."

"Commander!" They turned and found another Valkyrie approaching. "We just got word from our scouts. Goran of the Crystal Mountain Clan and fifty Ursines are on their way here to join Galtrists's rebellion."

Gwydion sighed. "Wonderful." He turned to Gaeriel. "I'm going to take the contingent north and meet him halfway. If he knows Galtrist is dead, he might come to his senses and turn around." He saw Belldandy about to protest and continued quickly. "You stay here and help your sister find her friend."

"Yes, Father."

Before Belldandy could get a word in, the village elder was pushing his way through, bowing quickly over and over again to Gwydion, thanking him. Gaeriel put her hand on her sister's arm and smiled.

"Come on," she said. "Let's go find your boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend," Belldandy corrected as she gazed over the cliff. "He's a dropper. He doesn't know how to fly yet."

"Okay," her sister said. "Tell you what, you go straight down and start downstream, I'll start downstream and move up."

"And what shall I do?" Yazlyn asked.

Gaeriel turned to her. "Stay here in case the 'roos need some help." She extended her wings and darted into the air as Belldandy jumped over the cliff.

888

He hurt.

A lot.

And he thought he might have wet himself.

Opening his eyes, he soon found why he made that assumption. His lower half was in the river while his head and torso were resting on a pebbly beach.

"Well," he grunted. "At least I didn't pee myself." He reached out and grabbed a handful of shoreline and pulled himself out of the water, rolling over onto his back and resting once his boots were clear.

He took several deep breaths and tried to take stock of his situation.

Not dead.

Not even all that injured.

Just really sore and wet.

Oh, and lost. Can't forget lost.

A shadow fell over him, and he looked up. For a moment, a flash of recognition raced through his mind as he looked up at the woman. Long moonlight hair fell down her back while violet eyes inspected him through long eyelashes.

"Well, you're not dead," the woman declared.

"Kinda wishing I was," he replied.

The woman smiled at him. "You scared my sister half to death."

"Sister?" he asked, struggling to sit up.

"Easy," she said. "You may not be broken, but I bet you're pretty sore from that fall."

He looked up at the cliff face rising at least three hundred feet above him. "Yeah, I guess," he offered. "Who are you?"

"My name is Gaeriel," she said. "I'm Belldandy and Yazlyn's sister."

"I thought you looked familiar," he said. "Are they okay?"

She nodded. "Yeah, we took out the Ursines, and everything's fine now. What's your name?"

"Don't have one," he said. "Though I hear 'that imbecile,' might become permanent." Finding the energy to stand up, he rose to his feet, and looked up at the cliff again. "Don't suppose there's an elevator somewhere?"

Gaeriel smiled and wrapped her arm around his waist. He flinched as a pair of white wings, checkered with black spots sprung from her back. "Going up," she announced. "Try not to scream, okay?"

888

"It was foolish!" Belldandy cried. "Absolutely foolish! You've been here a few weeks, and you think you know all the intricacies of these kind of situations?!"

He was still sore, otherwise he might have stood up and paced or something, but all he wanted to do was sit there with his back to the outside wall of the Salmaroo meeting house and hurt. Belldandy had decided to vent her frustrations with him now rather than wait until later and risk her anger cooling.

"You didn't have to say anything!" she went on. "Just sit there and let me handle it! You could have said you weren't a god, or that you were something else!"

"Look, I don't know why," he began, "But I just know, deep in my heart... that when somebody asks you if you're a god, you say _'yes_.'"

Belldandy stamped her foot and looked away. "The Almother save me from the charm of a dropper!" Standing nearby, Gaeriel and Yazlyn grinned at the comedic scene.

He smiled. "I'm sorry, okay?"

She crossed her arms over her chest and let out a breath. "I've grown rather attached to you, you know," she said. Noticing her sisters listening nearby, she quickly added. "Like a pet!"

"Okay!" he said, giving in. "I promise next time we're captured by giant fire-breathing bears, you can sacrifice your own life first."

She sighed. "That's not what I meant," Belldandy said. "And yes, what you did was very brave, just please don't do it again."

He winced as he climbed to his feet. "So now what?" he asked.

"The Salmaroo village was damaged in the fighting," Belldandy told him. "We should help them repair it."

"Okay, I'm game," he told her. "Shouldn't be too hard."

"You really think so?" she asked.

"I was an engineer for thirty-three years, I think I can help fix a stream-powered mill," he noted. He stopped suddenly, his eyes rushing back to her. "I was an engineer for thirty-three years," he whispered.

She said nothing, but quickly reached out as his legs gave way beneath him.

"Easy!" she said. "Easy! Sit down for a few minutes."

He looked up at her. "I don't know where that came from," he said. "But I was an engineer."

"Your memories are starting to surface," she said. "Don't strain too hard trying to find more. Let them come on their own."

He took a breath and tried to relax, letting the faces and images come in their own way and in their own time.

"I'm sorry," he finally said, "I just can't..."

"Don't rush it," Belldandy told him softly. She put her hand to his cheek. "You have time," she assured him. "All the time in the universe." She looked down at the ground between them. "And thank you," she whispered. "For saving my life."

He smiled. "Anytime."


	6. The Battles You've Won

AMG isn't mine. Sheldon is obviously a rip on Sheldon Cooper from "The Big Bang Theory."

**Blessings: Shattered Sky**

**Chapter 6**

**The Battles You've Won**

* * *

_Dear Lenus,_

_We've been here for more than a week, and with the help of the server's new AI, I'm finally making some reasonable progress. Eight days ago, the Demons launched their attack on the Favrashi. Meness was able to get some video of the fighting. I can only assume that Miri never made her warning. Maybe the Grigori caught her before she could get away, I don't know. I do know that the Demons showed their usual flair for the cruel when dealing with them._

_The Flood has destroyed two more realms while I've been away. I try to tell myself that I can do more good here, but at the same time I can't escape the guilt I feel. All I've ever tried to do, from becoming a Valkyrie to destroying the Roundtable to making that hideous deal with Hild to coming here, is the right thing. Yet when I look back, I can't remember when I've ever done the right thing._

_I'm trying, Lenus. I'm trying so hard. I wish you were here._

_Love,_

_Skuld_

* * *

Skuld folded up the piece of paper and stuck it in the small pouch under her armor with the others. If her calculations were correct, she should any second hear...

Three soft pings emitted from the terminal.

*PING-PING-PING* SKULD.

*PING-PING-PING* SKULD.

*PING-PING-PING* SKULD.

She took a breath and put on a smile. "Yes, Sheldon?"

PER YOUR THREAT TO DISASSEMBLE ME AND SCATTER MY PARTS TO THE FOUR WINDS, I HAVE COMPLETED THE SIMULATIONS YOU HAVE REQUESTED AND FOUND, TO NO SHOCK AT ALL, THAT MY CALCULATIONS WERE CORRECT THE FIRST TIME AND A SIMULATION WAS NOT NECESSARY.

"That's good news, Sheldon," Skuld told the computer.

I FEEL I MUST WARN YOU, HOWEVER, GIVEN HOW SKITTISH YOU APPEAR TO BE ABOUT SCIENTIFIC RISK, THAT THE SPATIAL COORDINATES YOU INTEND TO USE, THOUGH PRE-LOADED BY THIS FACILITY'S FORMER INHABITANTS, ARE NOT THE RESULT OF ANY CALCULATIONS CONDUCTED BY MYSELF.

"The coordinates will work," Skuld assured him. "Because the Favrashi knew where they wanted to go already."

ALL THE SAME, PERHAPS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER A TEST... LIKE SENDING A MONKEY FIRST.

"And how am I supposed to do that?"

WELL, I WOULD FIRST RECOMMEND FINDING OUT WHAT KIND OF BANANAS SERGEANT VOLTRAS LIKES AND THEN...

Skuld stopped listening at that point as she saw Shara walking toward her. Without a word, the regiment commander sat down on the stool in front of Sheldon's monitor.

YOU'RE IN MY SPOT.

Shara rolled her eyes and moved to another chair, facing Skuld with a concerned look on her face. She clasped her hands in front of her, and Skuld waited for her to speak. Finally, the blonde met her eyes.

"Don't you think it's time you told me what's really going on?" she asked.

Skuld looked away and pretended to be interested in something on the other monitor. "It's complicated," she said.

"Skuld," Shara began. "This isn't Colonel Shara, your subordinate talking. This is Shara, your friend. Tell me what's going on. You know I'm with you either way."

The Norn took a deep breath and bit her lip. "Okay," she said. "Creation and, by extent, the Almighty are dying." Shara started at this news, but Skuld continued. "The anomaly, the Flood, isn't going to stop... and the Almighty _can't_ make it stop. Creation has two years of life left in it and there is fuck-all anyone can do about it. The only even remote chance we have is wherever this machine can take us."

Shara leaned back and took it all in. "Okay," she said quietly. "So when do we go?"

"'We' don't," Skuld told her. "Another day or so, and this thing will be ready. When it is, Belldandy and I will go through, and the rest of you will head home."

"Oh, bullshit," Shara replied. "You're telling me that you and your sister are going to take on whatever's on the other side of this thing by yourselves?"

Skuld shook her head sadly. "Shara, there's only the slightest chance that there's even anything on the other side. For all we know, this thing is going to drop is in the middle of nothingness."

"And that's different from being sucked into the anomaly, how?" Shara asked. "If you ask me, it's either risk death for a reason now or accept a pointless one later. That's an _easy_ choice, Skuld."

"It's too risky," Skuld told her, turning back to the monitor and letting her know that the conversation was over.

Shara nodded and stood up, making it a few feet before turning back to her friend. "You remember that class in second year?" she asked. "Fundamentals of Organizational Leadership?"

Skuld turned back to her, puzzled at the conversation's new direction. "Yeah, sure."

"You remember how for the final paper, you had to choose a former Division commander and write up a profile?" She paused for a moment. "I picked Commander Gwydion. You know what I found out about him doing that profile?"

The Norn shook her head.

"He always thought he had to do it all by himself too," Shara told her pointedly. With her last point made, she turned and started for the temple entrance again.

888

"Do you really think we're going to find something down here?" Kestrel asked as she followed her brother deeper into the tomb-like structure that made up where the Favrashi kept their prisoners.

Hawk turned his head back to her. "Look, I don't know about you, but I am bored as shit." He turned and started walking again. "The place is secure, the Commander is playing with her new robot, and I'm starting to think the fact that there's supposedly a secondary objective has slipped her mind."

"Still," Kestrel went on. "What do you expect to find down here?"

"I don't know," Hawk said. "Messages, scratches in the walls, something with a name on it." He ran his hand along the blue-grey stone that lined the passageway before they came to a large chamber. A faint hum caught their attention, and they looked up to the far side of the room where a small sensor sphere floated.

"Did we lose one of these?" Kestrel asked.

"Yeah, Shara mentioned that one didn't come back," Hawk told her. It wasn't unusual to lose a probe. They often fell down holes or found exits and kept on going.

Kestrel studied it for a moment. "It looks like it wants to get on the other side of the wall. It must detect a chamber or something."

Hawk summoned his broadsword to his hand, and Kestrel raised her axe. She taped the wall with the axe blade and listened.

"Hollow?" Hawk asked.

"Hollow," she confirmed.

"Fuck it."

Three swings from his sword, and the wall collapsed in a heap at the Valkyries' feet. They shined their lights through the new chamber as the probe darted forward, committed to completing its task of mapping the temple.

The new chamber was smaller than the other; overhead lights, long since burned out, ran along the ceiling. A table, almost like a primitive gurney, sat in the room's center, while a glass orb hung directly overhead.

"This is weird," Kestrel breathed. "There's no other door. It's like they walled the place up for no reason."

"Maybe they kept someone here," Hawk theorized. "See that orb?"

It took Kestrel a second to pick up her brother's train of thought. "A seal?"

Hawk reached up toward the orb.

"Hawk, don't," Kestrel warned.

He didn't listen. His fingers gently brushed the piece of glass.

The god jumped back a second later as a burst of light filled the orb as if the contents had burst into flame. Kestrel raised her axe and watched the orb warily. A light shone from the bottom of the sphere, illuminating the gurney, and before either of them could react there was suddenly a body there.

It looked almost like an Egyptian mummy, wrapped head-to-toe in white cloth with only the figure's closed eyes visible.

"Almighty best and greatest," Kestrel breathed. "You found a fucking POW." She rushed forward and put her ear to the figure's chest. After a moment, she moved it to the nose, listening for breath. "I don't hear anything..."

She felt something grab the front of her uniform and her hair and cried out as she was suddenly rolled over the other side of the gurney onto the floor, the mysterious figure now crouched on top of her. A bandaged fist slammed into her eye with enough force to knock even a Valkyrie into unconsciousness.

"KESTREL!" Hawk cried, raising his sword.

Faster than anything he had ever seen in nature or created by man, the figure pulled the combat knife from the sheathe attached to the front of Kestrel's armor and whipped around, sending it whirling end over end to embed itself in Hawk's thigh.

The god fell to one knee. "Shit!" He tapped the crystal bone mic on his throat.

"TIC! TIC! TIC!" was all he had time to shout before the mummy rolled toward him, his sister's axe in hand. He raised his sword and prepared to fight.

888

Belldandy reached out, offering her sister the soup she had made. Skuld didn't seem to notice, so Belldandy stood there, stock still, ready to wait until she did. Her sister finally looked up, startled.

"Sorry," she said. "Thank you," she continued, taking the soup.

"How soon, do you think?" Belldandy asked her.

"Tomorrow, maybe," Skuld replied.

"Do you really think we'll find Keiichi?" she asked.

She saw the look in her sister's eyes and tried to ignore the answer. "I suppose we will find out when we get there, ne?"

"Yeah," Skuld told her.

"TIC! TIC! TIC!" they suddenly heard over the comm system next to them.

Skuld jumped to her feet. "Hawk?! Hawk?! Respond!"

"Did he find a bomb?" Belldandy asked, confused by the message.

"TIC," Skuld answered quickly, "Troops In Contact. Hawk's under attack. Shara! Voltras! Kestrel! Meet me in the east catacombs! We've got a TIC! Meness, stay with the bird!" She turned and thrust her carbine into Belldandy's hands. "You take this and stay here!"

"Your gun?! But... why?"

Skuld was already rushing toward the door. "In case this is just the start of it!"

Belldandy watched her sister go and put the carbine down on the table. "Sheldon san! Can you hear me?!"

OF COURSE I CAN HEAR YOU. I'M EQUIPPED TO RECEIVE AUDIO COMMANDS, AND IT WOULDN'T DO ANY GOOD TO HAVE THAT PROGRAM AND NOT...

"Can you show me what's happening in the east catacombs?!" Belldandy demanded.

AGAIN, OF COURSE I CAN.

The holomonitor to Belldandy's right came to life, providing her with information and a visual feed of Hawk struggling against an unknown adversary.

OH MY! IT LOOKS LIKE THEY FOUND PRISONER FOUR-OH-TWO. GOOD FOR THEM. IN ALL SERIOUSNESS, THOUGH, THEY PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE LEFT HER ALONE. PRISONER FOUR-OH-TWO IS A BIT OF A BADASS.

888

Skuld raced down the corridor where she could hear the sound of hand-to-hand combat. She picked up the pace, but slowed as she approached the mouth to the chamber, unsure as to what to expect. She saw Hawk hit the ground near the chamber entrance and stepped inside behind him. She found a mummy kneeling on the ground nearby, Kestrel's axe in its hand.

It looked up and saw her, and Skuld reached out, summoning her warhammer into the physical plane.

888

"Sheldon san, what is Prisoner Four-Oh-Two? Does she have a weakness or is there a way to stop her without hurting her?"

YOU KNOW, CONSIDERING THAT MY INTELLIGENCE AND ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS EASILY SURPASS THAT OF A PROFESSOR, I REALLY DO BELIEVE YOU SHOULD ADDRESS ME AS "SHELDON _SENSEI_," WHICH IS, OF COURSE THE JAPANESE HONORIFIC FOR TEACHER AND...

"Sheldon san, please!" Belldandy barked.

ALL RIGHT. NO NEED TO GET SNIPPY.

A window appeared in the holotop listing all the information the server had on Prisoner 402. Belldandy's face went white. "Almighty," she breathed.

Without another moment's hesitation, she dashed for the door and toward the east catacombs.

888

Skuld pushed her hammer against the axe handle in her opponent's hands and heard a sickening crack as the weapon began to yield to the force of her exertions. The mummy, already down on one knee, pushed back, unwilling to give even the tiniest fraction. She felt the pressure easy just for a second as the mummy started to turn, but the axe broke anyway, sending the mummy tumbling to the ground.

Given her opportunity, Skuld raised her hammer for the killing blow.

"SKULD! STOP!" she heard her sister behind her. She paused, but didn't move her eyes from the mummy. If it made even the slightest move she was going to smash its skull in like a watermelon.

"It's _Lind_, Skuld!" Belldandy called behind her.

She looked down in shock as the mummy looked up at her. A moment later, the mummy...Lind... seemed to decide that she had had enough, and collapsed against the floor unconscious.

Skuld slowly lowered her hammer. She heard Shara and Voltras rush into the chamber from another hallway and turned to watch them survey the scene.

"We secure?" Voltras asked.

The Norn looked to her sister and then down to Lind's sleeping form.

"I really don't know."

888

Skuld, Shara and Belldandy watched as Voltras carefully cut strips of cloth from Lind's body. The former Valkyrie was lying on the same gurney on which she had appeared, but this time Kestrel, having come to and not in the best of moods, kept watch from the corner with her carbine aimed directly at Lind's head.

After receiving enough medical attention to get him out of the woods, Hawk was sent upstairs to their camp to rest and keep an eye on things. The young Valkyrie wasn't sure if he should feel pissed off, relieved or, in a way, honored. Surviving an attack from Lind inspired all three.

Voltras made another snip and held up a three-foot strip of the cloth with a pair of forceps. "That's what I thought," he said. "Pain strips. Poor thing must have been wrapped in them for years."

Belldandy looked to Skuld for an explanation. "It's not a new thing," she said. "Back when Doublet was still in effect, Demons would sometimes want to punish someone they captured a little further than just sealing them. So they would soak strips of cloth in a solution of Bey's extract then wrap the person in them before sealing them. The extract inflames the nerve endings. Painful stuff."

"So, they did this to her and then _sealed_ her?" Belldandy asked, aghast.

"She must have pissed them off right good," Voltras commented as he removed another strip, exposing the rest of Lind's face.

Pity filled Belldandy's eyes as she saw her friend's face after so many years.

"What do you want to do with her?" Shara asked Skuld in a whisper.

"The smart thing to do would be to seal her," Skuld replied in an equally hushed tone. "Send her back to Heaven with the rest of you."

"Why seal her?" Belldandy demanded. "She's our friend!"

"We don't know that yet," Skuld told her. At Belldandy's incredulous look, she elaborated. "For all we know, they could have turned her. There's no way to know for sure."

Belldandy considered for several moments. "I don't believe so," she said. "Why would they treat one of their own this way?"

"Why wouldn't they turn her, is the question," Shara argued.

"It's not as definitive as you think," Belldandy retorted. "They almost turned me, but they failed. They may have tried with Lind and also failed."

"So how do we know for sure?" Shara asked. "If I was an imitation, a perfect imitation, how would you know if it wasn't really me?"

Belldandy turned to her sister. "Skuld, please. You must give her a chance."

"She might use that chance to kill us," Shara pointed out.

"Would she not give you a chance?" Belldandy demanded.

"No," Skuld replied quickly. "She wouldn't. She wouldn't see the need for the risk." She paused for a moment, watching Voltras as he continued to de-mummify Lind. "But I'm not her. We'll see what she has to say, then decide."

888

It was harder to come to this time around. The pain that had been her ever-present companion for years was gone, and for the first time since they had wrapped her, sleep was peaceful and she did not want to leave it. But fighting consciousness was like fighting the tide, and it wasn't long before her eyes were opening and staring up at the orb that had imprisoned her.

"How do you feel?" a voice to her left asked.

She turned her head and found the raven-haired woman she had fought earlier sitting there. Skuld? Was that possible? The last time she had seen Skuld, the Norn was a child. The woman before her wore what appeared to be a variation of Valkyrie armor with commander's insignia on the collar.

Her head turned to the right and she found a tall god with a thick mustache pointing a rifle at her face. That was more like it.

She looked up at the ceiling again. "Better," she said. "Are you really Skuld?"

"Yeah," Skuld replied.

"Then I have been away longer than I thought," Lind concluded.

"Twenty-five years by Heaven's reckoning," Skuld said as she poured the woman a cup of water. "If you've been here the entire time, about thirty-four by yours."

"It felt longer," Lind whispered. She took the water and inspected it carefully, shaking the cup and listening for the sound of something rattling around in the bottom. Satisfied, she drank eagerly.

"I don't doubt it." Skuld waited for her to finish the water before continuing. "I think you know what I'm going to ask you next."

"Am I one of them?" Lind answered.

"If you are, you're going to lie, and if you aren't I still have to suspect you're lying," Skuld told her straight out.

"I'm not an angel," Lind told her quietly. "But not for lack of effort on their part."

"Go on," Skuld prompted.

Lind locked her eyes on Skuld's. "I woke up here," she said. "I remember falling and hitting the ground, and then someone shooting me with something. Then here. They didn't even bother interrogating me at first. Instead they forced one of their angel eggs down my throat. I felt it hatch."

On the other side of her, Voltras tensed, his finger resting on the trigger.

"And then?" Skuld asked.

Lind grimaced. "And then Spear Mint and Cool Mint hunted it, chased it, through my soul until they had it trapped... and then they killed it." She took a deep breath at the memory of the pain of two parts of her soul murdering another. "Can I have some more water?" she asked.

Skuld filled her cup again and watched as Lind again checked it for angel eggs before drinking.

"I'm guessing they tried again," she said.

"Six more times," Lind confirmed. "After that, they gave up and started doing it the old fashioned way."

The current Division commander took a breath as she considered asking the next obvious question. In reality, it would make no difference to know what Lind had told them. Any intel she might have given them under torture was 25 years out of date, and the question would undoubtedly make her ashamed.

"Do you know what they were doing here?" Skuld asked.

"There were others here," Lind told her. "They kept me isolated, but I remember seeing them dragging Charon somewhere. Did you find anyone else?"

"Just you. We don't know for sure what happened to the others, but we have it on good authority that they were either turned or killed."

"Is Heaven safe?" Lind asked.

Skuld paused for a moment, not sure how to answer that question. "You've missed a lot," she said simply. "Creation is in danger, and we're here looking for a way to save it. You should rest now."

"What about the angels?" Lind demanded. "Did we beat them?"

The Norn took a breath and decided to give her an answer. "Your mission to the Roundtable ended right on the angels' doorstep," she said quietly. "It made them panic, and they attacked Heaven. Sensei took command of the Division and drove them off."

Lind showed the barest hint of a smile. "I knew he would," she said. "Where is he now?"

"He didn't make it," Skuld whispered.

The older valkyrie blinked. "What?"

"He didn't survive," the reply came. "We counter-attacked through the Roundtable. He went after a group of Valkyries who were cut off in a pocket dimension. The angels counter-attacked, and we blew the entire realm. He didn't make it out in time."

Lind lay back on the table, visibly deflated by the news. "Who else?" she asked.

"Yazlyn," Skuld told her quietly. "And Urd."

The Valkyrie closed her eyes. "I'm sorry, Skuld."

"I'm sorry I couldn't wake you with better news," she replied. She reached out and squeezed Lind's hand. "Get some rest. When you're up to it, Voltras will bring you upstairs to the camp." She looked up at the armed Valkyrie and gave him a nod. At his return nod, she turned her attention back to Lind. "Try to sleep."

888

She hadn't made it all the way back to the main chamber before there was a buzzing in her ear. Pausing on the stairs, she tapped her ear to respond to it.

"Go," she said.

"Commander, it's Meness," the Seraphim pilot announced. "Just got a coded message from D2. You're gonna want to see this."

"I'm on my way," Skuld sighed.

888

"God Almighty, Belldandy," Shara said as she chewed. "Where were you during the war?! I've never seen anyone make field rations taste this good, ever!"

"I'm glad I could contribute something," Belldandy told her as she scooped some of the stew she had concocted into Hawk's canteen cup. "I'm afraid I haven't been much use to all of you."

Hawk blew on the steaming cup before answering. "If the Commander says you need to be here, then you need to be here."

"You've known her long?" Belldandy asked.

"Long enough to know that she doesn't screw around," the Valkyrie told her. "She does what she has to do to finish the mission."

Shara, looking uncomfortable, said nothing and drank her stew.

"I feel as if I don't even know her," Belldandy said.

"She carries many burdens."

The three of them looked up to find Lind walking slowly toward them, Voltras a few paces behind with his carbine not _quite_ pointed at her. She took a seat on the opposite side of their small campfire and let out a painful breath. "She is the commander of the 1st Combat Division," she continued. "With the exception of perhaps the Almighty, there is no lonelier position in Creation." She looked up at Belldandy. "May I have some?"

"Oh! Of course, Lind san!" Belldandy replied quickly, scooping some soup into another cup and passing it to her. She made another one for Voltras and offered it to him.

"Feeling better?" Hawk asked with a touch of ice in his voice.

"Yes," Lind replied. "I ask for your forgiveness. I assumed it was them... preparing to torture me again."

Hawk chewed on that for a moment before smiling. "Thanks for not killing us."

"You're welcome," Lind told him without a hint of irony.

"Guess you have a lot of catching up to do," Shara said, making conversation.

"It would seem so," she replied. "You could start by telling me what this threat to Creation is and what I can do to help stop it."

Shara didn't answer, not sure how much Skuld wanted Lind to know. Belldandy, however, jumped in.

"It's called the Flood," she said. "And it's literally destroying Creation. My sister believes that the machine the Favrashi were working on here might hold the key to stopping it."

"Where did this Flood come from?" Lind asked. "Did the Demons unleash it?"

"I doubt that," Voltras said. "The Demons aren't really in the Creation-conquering business anymore. Not since the war 'n all."

"War?" Lind jumped in again. "Between us and the Demons?"

"Civil war," Shara felt safe coming into the conversation again. "Demons versus Demons."

"Someone rebelled against Hild?" Lind asked incredulously. "Who among the Demons had the courage for that?"

Shara smiled. "Hild."

"I'm sorry," Lind said, "My mind is still a little foggy..."

"Did Skuld tell you about what happened to Urd?" Shara asked. At Lind's nod she continued. "Hild refused to accept it, said she would have felt it if her daughter died. It consumed her." She paused to scoop more stew into her cup. "One day, she gets the idea that she can't focus on finding Urd and running the empire at the same time, so she does this thing she sometimes did where she splits her consciousness."

"I've seen her do this," Belldandy broke in. "She would often appear at our home in the form of a little girl."

Shara nodded. "Right, her appearance mirrored the percentage of consciousness split off from the original. So, she decides to do this again with one part of her running the day-to-day business of the empire and the other focused totally on finding her daughter."

"That seems like an economical solution," Lind commented.

"At first it seemed so," Shara agreed. "Problem was that after awhile with no luck, the Hild searching for Urd decided that the Hild running the empire wasn't giving her enough resources to complete her task. The two had a falling out, but here's the kicker. When Hild did this split, she wanted as much of herself as possible to be searching for Urd, so when she made the split, she did it right down the middle, fifty-fifty."

"So, she was essentially her own twin sister," Belldandy remarked.

Shara nodded. "Each equal to the other, with no more authority over the other as one twin over another. For all intents and purposes, they were _both_ the Daimakaicho. When the Hild searching for Urd, we called her the Omega, decided to just _take_ the resources she needed, there was no way to stop her. Each demon had to decide for themselves who was the real Hild, who was the Hild they should follow. The Omega Hild decided that the only way to find Urd was by leveraging the resources of the entire empire toward the search... and that meant taking it away from the other Hild, the Alpha."

"And that made war," Lind concluded.

"And that made war," Shara confirmed.

"Who won?" Lind asked.

"The Omega," Shara said. She shrugged as if it was no big deal. "She wanted it more."

Hawk and Voltras shared a look but said nothing.

Before anyone could press further, Skuld walked into the chamber. "New problem," she announced. "Word just came in from D2. There's a black galleon in the realm."

The Valkyries jumped to their feet. Belldandy looked to her sister in confusion.

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"It means, Oneesama, that there are a few thousand Demon soldiers in this realm," Skuld told her. "And they're heading this way."

"Coming for us?" Shara asked.

"D2 thinks they might be going after stragglers from their operation against the Angels," Skuld said.

"This was one of their bases," Shara agreed. "Maybe they're heading this way to hide."

"Either way it means we have potential hostiles in the area," Skuld told them. "Meness has the Seraphim ready to fly. I want all of you on it. Belldandy and I will stay here until the machine is complete."

No one said anything to this statement. Skuld looked at each of them.

"This is the part where you say, 'Yes, Ma'am,'" she hinted.

"Skuld," Shara began. "I told them."

The Norn glared at her friend. "You did, huh?"

Shara touched the crystal mic on her throat. "Kestrel, Meness, come to the chamber. We're having a family meeting."

"I didn't think I needed to say that it was in confidence," Skuld told her.

The blonde goddess nodded. "I know. But look at it from my perspective. You tell me the end of the world is coming if this mission fails, and then you want to send us away for our own safety. Conflicting statements, Skuld. If this mission fails, there _is _no safety. And before you send us away so you can walk into this shit alone, I wanted everyone to have a say in it."

Kestrel and Meness appeared in the hallway and took their places around the fire.

"Look, mate," Voltras began, "More than a hundred times before we've been willing to die to finish one of your missions. This time isn't any different. I'm staying."

"Meness," Shara prompted.

"I could go home," Meness told her. "And wait to die with my family. Or I can stay here and maybe help save them. Besides, if those demons decide to stir something up, you're going to need my bird."

Hawk and Kestrel nodded in agreement. "Way we figure it, Ma'am," Hawk began, "Dying here, or dying back in Heaven makes no difference to us. We're going to die with our family either way."

Skuld bit her lip. "And you, Shara?" she asked.

"After everything we've been through together, Skuld," she said. "You _are _my family, and I'm not going to let you do this alone. I'm going to get you through that portal... or I'm going to die trying."

Belldandy smiled, touched by the Valkyries' loyalty to her sister and the bond they shared.

"Skuld," she said, "You cannot send them away anymore than you could send me. This is where we belong."

Lind nodded in agreement. "If whatever strength I have left can help you beat back this evil," she said, "Then it is yours... Commander."

Skuld bit her lip, trying not to betray the feelings welling up in her. "Thanks, guys," she said. "The machine will be ready tomorrow morning. We have to hold this position until then. Let's get to work on that perimeter."

"CURAHEE!" the Valkyries cried in unison.

"Curahee," Skuld replied quietly.

888

While the others set about establishing a defensible perimeter, Lind found a small chamber away from the others, one that still had a working water basin. She dipped her hands into the cool water and splashed it onto her face.

She was a Valkyrie again, she was where she belonged again. She didn't care if she was going to die tomorrow. She would die as a Valkyrie, standing beside other Valkyries.

A pang of guilt ran through her. She had been dishonest, and she didn't like that. But she knew what the price of honesty would be.

As if to drive that point home, a voice behind her piped up.

"So..."

She turned and grimaced at the sight that met her. Cool Mint and Spear Mint floated before her, their eyes warily tracking the _thing_ that floated between them.

The red-headed angel smirked at Lind and continued.

"What, exactly, do you intend to tell them about _me_?"

888

It was so out of the ordinary that what he was looking at failed to register with him for a moment. He had actually gotten used to seeing things like half-salmon-half-kangaroos, fire-breathing bears, elephant-nosed pixies and the like that when they entered a town filled with people that looked just like him he was taken aback.

"What is this?" he asked, turning to his right to address Belldandy.

"It's an outpost town," Belldandy told him. "It started as a kind of refugee camp for droppers because there was water here, and over a hundred years or so it became its own little town. They call it Rivendell.'" She looked at his bewildered expression and shrugged. "I don't understand it either."

"I don't care what they call it!" Yazlyn broke in. "It has a hot springs, and the first promise of a hot bath in a month!"

"True," Belldandy conceded. "We have gotten rather sidetracked." She turned to him sadly. "I'm sorry. I told you a month, but..."

He shrugged. "It's okay. I don't really have any evidence that there's anywhere I need to be, right?"

"Then it's settled!" Yazlyin declared with a clap of her hands. "Hot food, a hot bath and a warm bed!"

"You know, you are not required to come with us," Belldandy poked her sister.

The nutty professor smiled. "Abandon my sister and this young god in their time of need? Sister, I could not do that."

Belldandy's eyes narrowed. "Uh huh."

"Come on!" Yazlyn cried, rushing forward. "I know this quaint little inn at the end of the road with its own bath!"

Belldandy sighed. "Sometimes I wonder if she ever grew up at all."

"A bath does sound good, though," he replied. With a shrug, the two followed the more eccentric goddess down the street, which opened into the town square. For a "refugee camp," the town was probably the most modern thing he had seen. The streets were brick, and the buildings lining it were a combination of timber and very nice stonework.

At the center of the town square was a simple fountain. Much more ornate was what stood off to one side. It was a bulletin board carved from wood and stone and unlike the fountain it was quite obviously the center of town. He gravitated toward it, watching pieces of parchment flutter in the gentle breeze. Reaching out, he steadied one so he could read it.

RICHARD FERRIS

I WAS HERE ON THE 5TH DAY OF FROST

I'M HEADING NORTH

BETH, IF YOU SEE THIS, MEET ME IN TWO RIVERS

He found another one just below it.

IF ANYONE SEES ERIC SCHMIDT, PLEASE TELL HIM SAMANTHA IS IN CHI-TOWN.

"Many droppers regain their memories over time," Belldandy explained. "When they do, they leave messages here for their loved ones... in case they come looking for them."

"Do they ever find them?"

"I've never heard of it happening," Belldandy confessed.

"Hey! Are you two coming?!" Yazlyn called out as she reappeared behind them.

"Yazlyn, do you have something to write with?" he asked.

"Sure!" She dug into her pack and produced a pencil and scrap of paper. He took them from her and started to scribble.

"What are you doing?" Belldandy asked.

I WAS AN ENGINEER FOR 33 YEARS

I'M GOING SOUTH TO SEE THE ALMOTHER

He tacked the note to the board and handed the pencil back to Yazlyn. "Maybe someone knows me," he said.

Yazlyn rested her hand on his shoulder. "I'm sure someone does," she said. "And if not, you have Belldandy and I."

"Yeah," he said, obviously preoccupied.

"Hey, droopy Drew!" Yazlyn said, taking his hands in hers in an attempt to cheer him up. "Do you know what you need? A party!"

"A party?" Belldandy asked.

"A party!" Yazlyn confirmed, pointing at the notice posted nearby of a post-harvest festival that night. "If mother taught us one thing it was that you never EVER pass up an opportunity to attend a good party."

His lips quirked up in a smile. "I'm not even sure I'm a party kind of guy."

"Then tonight we find out!"

888

The people who lived in Rivendell had been pulled from different parts of the old world, and as such, so were their musical tastes. So while it was a little jarring at first to hear a fiddle playing with back-up from what appeared to be taiko drums, somehow the little group of musicians in the square made it work.

People who lived in the town, "Rivendwellers," he had found they called themselves, danced to the music while a sizeable percentage of the partygoers were in line for alcohol and the meat from a creature that looked like a cross between a pig and a hippo. He was standing in this line now while the two goddess sisters were standing near the bulletin board, watching the dancers.

Belldandy found her attention pulled to the piece of paper bearing the god's message as it fluttered in the breeze, diligently hanging onto its spot among the others in spite of the wind.

"Sister," Yazlyn began, "I believe we should talk about our young friend."

Belldandy blinked. "Oh?"

"It merely occurred to me that it's been more than a month, and I was curious to know how you classify your relationship with him."

"Oh," Belldandy said. She cleared her throat. "I would classify it as cordial." Her eyes travelled to the line where he was waiting to get them all drinks.

"Cordial?" Yazlyn repeated, absently twirling the end of her braid in her fingers.

"Yes, cordial," Belldandy said.

"Sister," Yazlyn began again, "May I take that to mean that there's no... amorous dynamic to your relationship?"

Belldandy looked at her sister in shock. "Are you asking me if I've slept with him?"

"I didn't want to assume," Yazlyn said casually. "But he is rather sweet." She shrugged. "Why would you not?"

"Well, I haven't," Belldandy said testily.

"Oh, good," Yazlyn replied. "Dibs."

"Excuse me?!"

"Dibs," Yazlyn repeated. "I call dibs."

"Dibs? On _him_?!" Belldandy cried. "You can't call dibs on a person!"

"Yes, I can," Yazlyn told her. "Remember Mother's story about father and her sister? Dibs."

Belldandy rubbed her temples. "Yazlyn, you cannot call dibs on him. For one, I forbid it."

"I see," Yazlyn said as the god in question started approaching them, three cups of ale in his hand. "Then I suppose we'll have to stick with the 'one snoozes, one loses' principle."

"I suppose so!" Belldandy snapped. She blinked as her sister suddenly stepped forward into the god's path and gave him an exaggerated curtsey. He gave her a questioning look, and Yazlyn offered him her hand with a nod toward the dancers.

He smiled and turned, putting their drinks on the edge of the fountain before taking the goddess's hands and following her toward the other dancers.

"WHEEE!" Yazlyn called out as they passed Belldandy.

Belldandy ground her teeth at her sister's antics. Helping a stranded dropper was not a single's event... even though, yes, three of her sisters met their husbands that way, but even so...

She cocked her head as she observed the two of them and something struck her. He could dance. Not only dance, but dance rather competently. She wondered briefly who it was he had danced with in his other life. Girlfriend?

Almother forbid, a wife?

He _was_ different from the others, she knew. Less questioning of the incredible as if he were already a part of this world.

She turned and decided to leave the party early. If her sister could give him happiness, then so be it.

888

He closed his eyes and rested his head against the towel as he luxuriated in the bath's warm water. Yazlyn definitely had the right idea about this place. The basement had a large group bath twenty feet across that was fed by water from the hot springs. At this time of night, no one was in it but him, and he was taking the opportunity to just let the exertions of the last six weeks leach out of him.

The festival had been more fun than he wanted to admit at first. It had been so long since he had really just relaxed and had fun. It made him wonder what kind of man he actually was. Was he fun? Was he deadly serious? He knew he was an engineer. Maybe he was one of those nerdy guys so involved in his work that he didn't know what fun was.

He wished his memories would return. He was tired of being the man with no name.

Footsteps from the other side of the bath made him open his eyes. Standing on the opposite side of the water was Yazlyn, a white silk robe tied around her waist.

"Oh, Yazlyn," he said. "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were waiting." He half turned and started to reach for his own robe. "Just give me a second and it's all..."

Her robe fell from her shoulders and puddled at her feet.

"...yours," he finished, eyes wide. He didn't look away. He couldn't bear to. Despite her bookish appearance, Yazlyn's body was quite simply a work of art. He knew he should turn away and preserve her modesty, but given that she was the one disrobing in front of him, something told him she was okay with it, that it was her intent for him to admire her.

She stepped forward, her foot resting on top of the water, walking across the bath as casually as if she were walking down the street. She came to a stop in front of him and looked down at his shocked expression with a smile.

"No rush," she said.

Slowly, she sank into the water until their eyes were level.

"I thought you might need someone to wash your back," she said.

"Um... I'm good, actually," he said nervously.

She smiled at his discomfiture, fully aware that this was going well. For some reason, all daughters of the Almother were exceptionally adept at the art of seduction. She reached out and touched his arm, gently establishing a physical connection with him.

"Then do you mind washing mine?" she asked. She grinned.

"Yazlyn," he whispered. He swallowed nervously. "Look, I'm flattered, but... you don't even know me."

"Neither do you," she said. "But I know enough to know that you're a good man. Or... do you not find me attractive? Is it a physical thing?"

"No, you're... you're spectacular, actually," he admitted. "But..."

"You're alone here," she whispered. "As am I. I've been out here a long time. There is no sin in two people curing their loneliness together."

"I don't know who I am," he said.

"I know enough," she said and leaned in, brushing her lips against his. It was electrifying for him, and as she pulled away, there was a flash in his mind, an image, just for a moment.

"Belldandy," he whispered.

888

Belldandy stood at the window and watched the people still partying below with a sigh. She knew Yazlyn was at this moment seducing her friend and wasn't sure what she should feel about that. It seemed wrong, somehow, to seduce a man who didn't even know who he was. Maybe there was something wrong with her, she thought. Her other sisters didn't seem to have this problem of holding back, why did she?

_He doesn't even know his own name_, she admonished herself.

Well, then perhaps it was time for her to give him one. He couldn't just keep going on as a nameless god. Eventually he was going to have to call himself something, and if his memories didn't return...

Then... he was free, right? Free to pursue a relationship with Yazlyn if he so chose... or anyone else for that matter.

What name would be suitable, though? He was a good man, that much she could sense in him. What was a name for a good man?

She remembered when she was little, listening to her mother and father discuss names for the goddess her mother was then carrying. They had decided if it was another girl, Yazlyn, and a boy would be...

"Keiichi," she whispered, a man her parents had thought rather highly of.

Her cheeks went hot as she suddenly remembered the stories her mother and father had told her about Keiichi. Keiichi, she remembered, was the fiance of her aunt... and her namesake.

_Keiichi and Belldandy, _she remembered. It was always Keiichi _and_ Belldandy. She swallowed as her chest tightened. Perhaps the Almother _had_ sent him to her for a reason.

She looked up as the door opened and Yazlyn entered. Her sister flopped down onto her bed and looked up at the ceiling.

"Did you miss him?" Belldandy asked, wondering how it was her sister could be back so soon. No daughter of the Almother _ever_ struck out when they put their mind to it.

"No," Yazlyn said casually. "I decided not to push it."

Belldandy blinked at that statement. She was curious, but at the same time didn't want to be. "Oh?" she replied. "Did it not go well?"

Yazlyn turned her head to her sister. "I kissed him," she announced.

"Good for you," Belldandy declared, turning back to the window in a huff. "You're just like Mother. You have no subtlety whatsoever!"

"And you, dear sister, are too much like Father," Yazlyn returned. "Too slow sometimes to realize what you have."

"What do you mean by that?!"

"I kissed him... and then he said _your_ name," Yazlyn continued.

Belldandy froze, her breath caught in her throat.

"Oh," she squeaked.

Yazlyn rolled onto her stomach and addressed her sister directly. "He was very apologetic about it," she said. "I think he was interested, he just... couldn't get over the one he really wanted." She arched an eyebrow at Belldandy.

Beldlandy turned away from her, her hand going to her chest.

"He's in his room now," Yazlyn told her. "My theory is that you would have more success than I did."

She swallowed. "What do you think of the name, 'Keiichi?'" she asked.

Yazlyn's faced scrunched up in thought. "Mother's friend, right?"

"Yes," Belldandy whispered.

"It's kind of an odd sound," Yazlyn said. "But it does roll off the tongue."

She turned back to her sister. "Do you think he would accept that name?" she asked. "If... If I offered it to him..."

Yazlyn smiled at her. "He doesn't know who he is, but he knows who wants to be. I think he could want to be 'Keiichi'... if it meant being what you want him to be."

_What _I _want him to be?_

She straightened. "No," she whispered. "He must find his own name. And he must become what he wants to be in this world."

"Then you intend to take him to Mother?" Yazlyn asked. "What if..."

"Yes," Belldandy broke in.

"What if, indeed..."


End file.
